


Stellar Outcasts

by lifeofsnark



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: And I didn't even realize until someone pointed it out in a comment, And funnier, Ben is very patient, Blow Jobs, Canonverse AU, Content warning: very brief dubcon, Cunnilingus, F/M, First Order fell, Happy Ending, Hosnian Sunrise, I send Rey out on girl's night, Panic Attack, Post Episode IX, Praise Kink, Resistance won, Rey's having problems adjusting to post war life, Rose gives Rey the, She also has major, Smut, This is much sexier than it sounds, come to spacejesus speech, intimacy issues, like so much praise kink, making jokes in bed, non-erotic fingering, p in v, rey goes to therapy, some hurt/comfort going on, yeah - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2019-11-27 09:51:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18193019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeofsnark/pseuds/lifeofsnark
Summary: Stellar Outcasts: Stars (or other heavenly bodies) outside a recognized galaxy system.After the war and the fall of the First Order, a new form of government is being built in Hanna City and a new kind of normal has come to the galaxy. For Finn, Poe, Rose, and the returned Ben Solo, this means brokering treaties and writing legislation. Rey spends her days occupied with retrofitting spacecraft and acting as a kind of enforcer for the new galactic Council.She also spends most of her nights in Ben Solo’s bed.After one particular mission it becomes clear that not all of Rey’s problems were solved when the Resistance won the war. A lifetime of deprivation and self-sufficiency isn’t something that goes away on its own.OR: a canonverse friends-to-lovers AU featuring Rey’s intimacy issues and Ben’s patience.





	1. Life Antebellum

There is no normal after war. There is only the after. 

 

It’s an after Rey hadn’t let herself think about. How was there an after when the whole  _ galaxy  _ was controlled by the First Order, how was there an  _ after  _ when the last jedi is gone, how is there an  _ after  _ for the Resistance when all eighteen of them fit on the  _ Millennium Falcon?  _ They lived like that for  a year, fugitives hopping from port to port, always fleeing a fate they couldn’t escape. 

 

But there is an after, and she was around to see it. 

 

She’d had to do terrible things, things that thirty years before would have classified her as a dark-sider forever. 

 

Ben did good things. Things that pulled him back to the light.  Ben had risen to meet her as she fell, and together they were finding a new path; a new way to view the Force. It wasn’t- wasn’t binary, wasn’t on or off or good or bad. It just  _ was-  _ like their Force-bond was. Rey knew that she should be thankful for it, in the scheme of things. 

 

Even now Rey would admit that he had his mother’s head for leading; for seeing to small needs in dim places just as effectively as the imperatives that affected the whole galaxy. She left him to it, Ben and Poe. They were the ones with command experience; the ones who had been trained for command. They balanced each other, and already this corner of the galaxy was a better place for it. 

 

As for herself- she was realizing that she was a fighter without a battle and a scavenger without a task. It wasn’t a confidence issue. She was good at what she did; she could fix an engine and cut down guards and climb into small, high places, but that’s not what anyone  _ needed  _ right now. It was just what she wanted. She wanted to feel useful; she wanted to feel like she played a part in the galaxy she’d helped to save. 

 

As a child on Jakku there’d been an older woman who worked in the repair yards, rewiring the bits and pieces of machinery that scavengers dragged in from the desert. She’d been the one to watch out for Rey the first few years, to teach her how to survive in the desert. (And how to survive on a planet where physical strength was the only kind that mattered.)

 

“Don’t matter what you want, pretty thing,” she’d told Rey. “Only matters what you need. You may wanna wash, but you  _ need  _ to drink. You don’t waste your water ration on washin’. Not unless you wanna try trading something precious for more come sunup.”

 

It was true- it didn’t matter what she wanted. It mattered what the new Council (and freed galaxy)  _ needed.  _

 

They needed newly elected representatives flown in from all sides of the galaxy, so Rey flew.

 

The  _ Falcon  _ was gone, and Chewie with it, so she flew alone, or with Silvia, one of the Resistance pilots that had been with them since Crait. She and Rey didn’t need to talk, much. When they flew, pilot and copilot, it was with a quiet understanding:  _ this was bigger than they were _ . 

 

Everyone had lost something. 

 

So Rey flew ‘missions’ (it wasn’t like they were challenging), and helped to recommission the First Order fleet into something less useful for warfare and more useful for reconstruction, and showed up to meetings when her holo announced them on her schedule. She did what was needed. 

 

It still left her too much free time. It continuously amazed her, in the quiet moments, how much longer her days were when they weren’t entirely focusing on subsistence. Food showed up when she wanted it, water was seemingly endless, and if she scraped her knuckles or ripped a shirt there was something to take care of that need, too. 

 

She bunked in the old congressional building in the center of Hanna City. Poe’s bunk was in there somewhere as well- the bunk he was sharing with Finn and Rose. 

 

They were busy too, doing what was needed, and Rey really, truly was happy for them. Finn had been put in charge of Storm Trooper re-acclimatization. Rose had started a committee looking into war reparations and resource allocation, and for a girl who’d spent most of her time studying the moving parts of an engine, she sure took to the moving cogs of a galaxy real kriffing quick.   At night, when the three of them stumbled out of meetings and into their apartment, they studied each other. 

 

It wasn’t just sex with them, for Finn and Rose and Poe. She knew that. It’s why she was able to tell herself that, for her, the sex really was just that. Just bodies, moving in the dark. Rey told herself she knew the difference. 

 

After all- Ben hadn’t said anything different. 

 

She needed him again. She knew that as she lay in her dark bunk, feeling her muscles tense and shiver under her skin. She knew that if she laid in her too-big bed and stared at the smoothly-painted ceiling she’d only get angry and trapped and fidgety, and nothing good would come from that. Instead she dressed again, tugging on her heavy canvas trousers and breast band and tunic and arm guards. Boots were last, and as was her instinct now, she buckled on the thick leather belt from which hung her saber (the saber that was hers, but wasn’t). 

 

Ben’s apartment was on the east wing of the old congressional building. It took a dozen turns and two separate staircases to get there, but she knew the way, even in the dark. It was second nature to her to send the Force out ahead, to catalogue those who might see her, to nudge them into another direction for the softest moment. 

 

A year ago she’d have felt bad about it. A year ago she might not have known how. She certainly wouldn’t have been able to feel every heartbeat in the building (from the smuggled-in kitten right up to the steady  _ thumpthump  _ of the former Supreme Leader above her). 

 

He’d felt her coming, too. He was shirtless and barefoot and sitting on the edge of his bed when she tumbled the lock on his door with a thought and padded quietly into his bedroom. 

 

“Again?” he asked, one hand outstretched. (He didn’t wear gloves anymore. Rey was glad for that.)

 

“Again,” she said, taking his hand. 

 

His fingers twined through hers, and his other hand slid up her arm to grip the base of her skull and force her head down to his. His kisses were more teeth than anything else, all sharp bites of lust and punishment over her lips and tongue. She was standing in the open bracket of his thighs, so Rey slid her hand down one cotton-clad leg to his groin, grinding the heel of her palm over the heavy bulge she found waiting for her. 

 

“You need me too,” she whispered, pulling her head away from his. Maybe she’d pulled too suddenly, because she could taste copper on her tongue. 

 

“More and more,” he told her, a paler shadow in the dark of his room. 

 

The nights weren’t truly dark here, like they were in the black of space or the desert of Jakku. This was a city, one pulsing with people and life and  _ light.  _ It infiltrated the windows and cracks under the door, and turned the night grey instead of black. IBen was half-concealed in the gloom, the shadows softening the haphazard angles of his face. (Rey wondered if they softened her, too: after all, she was  _ there,  _ wasn’t she? There again, two nights in a row.)

 

Rey knew he’d told her the truth. It was a side-effect of their lingering Force bond: sometimes they could glimpse each other, even tens of sectors apart. More often that not, though, they could feel each other, two bodies caught orbiting a void. It was enough. It was too much. 

 

It was why, when she  _ needed,  _ she went to Ben. He already knew. 

 

She stepped away from him and started undressing, yanking her tunic off, then her arm guards. Ben stood and slid off his pants and then hers, the material quick to slide off her hips. There wasn’t any softness to his movements, but no real passion either.  They were getting naked, the precursor to getting into bed. It was efficient and easy. 

 

She could smell his skin when he stood before her. He smelled like some kind of expensive soap, all fresh-cut lumber and spicy cleanness. She knew she’d smell like that too, when she walked away later. Rey reached out to rest one hand in the center of Ben’s chest, ostensibly to shove him back onto his bed so she could follow, hard bodies tumbling onto soft sheets. 

 

She paused for just a moment too long, letting his heartbeat thud against her palm. He had the loudest heart she’d ever heard. His had been the first one she’d learned to pick out from the crowd when she’d been practicing with the Force. She’d written it off as her hating him; chalked it up to Kylo Ren being her biggest threat. 

 

Now she thought he was just the most vital thing; the supernova star that made all its brethren look pale by comparison. 

 

She pushed against his chest (skin, sternum, flesh, pulse), and Ben fell back willingly, scooting so that his back was to the wall and his legs stretched out in front of him. 

 

“Making me do the work?” Rey asked, going for lightness as she crawled over his sleep-warmed sheets to his lap, where his cock jutted up towards his belly. 

 

He shrugged with one broad shoulder, his eyes steady on hers. “I did it last night.”

 

“Hmm,” Rey agreed. “You did.”

 

She ducked her head down, still braced on hands and knees, and swiped her tongue over the flushed head of his cock.  _ This  _ was new. Before- when she’d had a similar arrangement with Osh, the lanky kid who’d been working for (owned by) the dock manager, they hadn’t used their mouths. It had felt too dirty, in a place where water was a rare and wonderful thing. 

 

Now, with the skin of Ben’s groin smelling of the same soap as his chest, his cock was a treat. She was pretty sure he knew it, too. She tongued into the slit of his dick, glancing up at him as she did. His eyes glittered back at her, and his arms were crossed over his chest. 

 

He was going to make her work for it- good for him. 

 

Rey fisted the base of his cock as she took him into her mouth, carefully wrapping her lips over her teeth. She bobbed her head and fist in time, trying to exert just the right amount of pleasure. She had to ease them both into this- go too fast and she’d gag, go too slowly and she’d be here all night. 

 

She certainly didn’t want  _ that.  _

 

She used the breathing techniques Luke had shown her during their one awkward, shared meal to adjust. If only he could see how she was using those measured breaths through her nose  _ now.  _ He’d torn down a stone building when she’d so much as touched Kylo’s  _ hand.  _

 

“What’s funny?” Ben asked, finally uncrossing his arms to cup the base of her skull with one broad hand. 

 

She pulled off his cock and wiped the back of her left hand over her mouth as her right continued its rhythm up and down the impossibly soft skin of Kylo’s shaft, adding a light squeeze with each pass over its head. 

 

“I was using meditation tricks to breathe,” she said, watching his face. 

 

His nostrils flared just a moment before he grinned. Of  _ course  _ he followed her train of thought. It had always been a little frightening, that she never had to explain herself to him. 

 

“Celibate fools,” he said with a smirk. His hand cupped her head again, guiding her back to his cock, and Rey took him into her mouth with a sigh. She liked this- liked wearing his fingers like a crown, liked losing herself in the slow breaths and wet sucks. Things were simple here, in his bed in the dark. 

 

She moved a little faster and fisted him a little tighter, tasting salt and musk on her tongue as she did. His fingers in her hair weren’t passive anymore; he was yanking at the ties in her hair, pulling out the bands (and more than a few strands of hair as he did). It was his one real insistence. He’d let her fuck him upright and dressed, let her find him in the dark when she knew his day had been long, but he insisted her hair come down. She didn’t care why. 

 

This time when her hair tumbled down from its knots he gathered it up in one hand and held it. To follow her fist down to the root of his dick she had to pull against her hair, enjoying the prickling sting of pressure on her scalp. 

 

_ “Fuck you,”  _ she muttered to him when she slid up again. 

 

“You already are,” he told her, twitching his hips up to meet her. 

 

Rey hummed as she took him in her mouth again, and she heard Ben’s breathing stutter as his hips thrust again. She’d take him apart like this, one step at a time. She moved faster and held him more tightly, humming occasionally as he rocked in time with her mouth. He was still holding her hair like a leash, and she could taste his orgasm building, thick and bitter as an evaporated sea. 

 

“Rey,” he said, tugging on her hair a little harder. She could hear the warning in his voice. She pulled away (wondering if he’d gotten a handful of hair on that one) and worked him harder, feeling him swell between her fingers and lips. 

 

“Rey,” he said again, his voice low and throaty, and then he was coming. It surprised her at first, enough that she almost pulled away, but she managed to hold her breath and swallow, and then to swallow again, panting, when he pulled his over-sensitive cock away from her mouth. 

 

She was still kneeling over him, open mouthed and breathing a little too hard, when one of his big palms swiped over her lips, catching a stray string of spit. 

 

“Was that the first time you’ve ever…?”

 

“All the way, yeah,” said Rey, swallowing again. It wasn’t as bad as she’d expected, but also somehow worse. He was  _ in her,  _ now. In her in a way that would last longer than twenty minutes of rocking hips. 

 

He caught her cheek with his fingers and turned her up to him, taking her damp lips in a kiss. His tongue swiped over hers like he was trying to chase his own taste at the back of her throat. They didn’t kiss much, normally. It wasn’t a conscious thing; not a  _ rule.  _ To be honest, they were usually busy with other things. But tonight he kissed her, one hand holding her chin, the other hand back in her hair. 

 

“Move,” he told her when the broke apart for air. 

 

She scooted off him to the side and watched hungrily as the muscled of his stomach rolled as he shoved himself further down on the bed. Sideways like this he was so tall that his knees hooked over the edge of the bed when he laid flat on his back. 

 

“Come here,” he said, imperial and imperative, patting the center of his chest. 

 

Rey hadn’t done that before, although she’d heard it was done. “Are you sure?” she asked, moving to his side but not ready to toss a leg over him. (Well, at least like this. He’d be hard in another few minutes.)

 

His eyebrow raised, a dark slash against the pale planes of his face. “Quite,” he said. 

 

What the hell. She straddled him awkwardly (his shoulders were so much wider than his hips, holy _stars_ ) and before she could catch her balance he’d grabbed her waist and dragged her forward and over his chin. Automatically her hands came up to catch herself against the wall, and as she fell into position he moved one hand between her thighs to open her, spreading the moisture that had gathered there when she’d taken him in her mouth. 

 

He didn’t talk, and didn’t tease. That wasn’t the point. He bumped his nose against her mons first, in a friendly kind of way, and Rey slid one hand down the smooth plaster of the wall to tangle in Ben’s hair. She could feel warmth spreading through her belly as Ben settled in to the task, his hands on her hips, his tongue swiping flatly from her entrance to her clit. 

 

“Ben,” she breathed, tugging at his hair. He was touching her, licking her, but it wasn’t enough, and he knew it. Touching him like this she could feel- an  _ echo  _ of his smugness, confirmation that he understood and enjoyed her frustration. 

 

Rey took her hand out of Ben’s hair and placed it over his, her fingers pressing down on top of his hand where it held her hip. She squeezed, pressing his fingers into her flesh (let there be bruises in the morning), and he took her clit between his lips in retaliation. 

 

Of all of Ben’s features, his mouth was the softest. 

 

He let her rock against him, fucking herself on his mouth, and as they both lost each other in the feel and sound and smell, his fingers tightened of their own volition, denting the smooth flare of her hips and holding her up; controlling her from beneath. 

 

Rey, for her part, was splayed-fingered against the wall, her head hanging low, little gasps and moans falling from her lips, her hips swaying towards and away from Ben’s mouth like the tide. 

 

“ _ Stars,”  _ she breathed, rocking forward again, only to find herself stopped by Ben’s hands on her hips; his grip locking her in place. Now the  _ real  _ fun began; now she took everything he gave her because she’d come to him, because she’d wanted this, because he knew she could take it and beggars can’t be choosers. 

 

With anyone else that vise-like clamp would be terrifying, but with Ben (who could  _ literally feel  _ her pleasure in his own mind) it was thought-stopping bliss. He knew she could take it, whatever it was he chose to give. He took away the need to  _ chase  _ her release. With him, all she needed to do was trust that it would come. 

 

Her fingernails dragged down the off-white walls and little gasps continued to fall from her mouth, the silent exaltations of someone whose safety had long depended on quiet. 

 

As tension ratcheted even higher in Rey’s belly, and her heart began to sprint, she could feel the muscles of her thighs flexing, pushing against the grip Ben had on her, trying to get away from the mouth that was driving her higher and higher with no quarter given, no thought for sensitivity and stimulation and then-

 

_ Kriff,  _ then she was shuddering over him, bent at the waist, her forehead pressed sweatily to the wall and one hand yanking at Ben’s hair. 

 

Ben was still working at her, but slower and delicately now, ignoring the pained whines escaping from between Rey’s teeth. 

 

“ _ Please,”  _ she whispered, and he let her go so quickly she toppled over, landing against his pillows. 

 

“Alright?” he asked, wiping his mouth on the sheets. She wondered how explained it, needing a new set nearly every night. Maybe he changed them himself. That thought made her smile. Who’d have thought the former Supreme Leader could execute Fleet Bedcorners?

 

“Great,” said Rey, still breathless. 

 

Ben watched her for a second, dark eyes locked with amber, and then he got up and crossed the dark floor to his ‘fresher. Rey closed her eyes against the light and listened to the rasp of her own breath as water ran. 

 

“Here,” said Ben, and then a wet washcloth slapped against Rey’s breasts. 

 

“Hmm? Thanks,” said Rey, still not moving. She slid the cloth down over her belly, shivering at the rivulets of coolness running over her skin, and swiped it over her mons and labia. The chill of the cloth felt good against the oversensitive, too-hot skin. 

 

“Of course,” said Ben from the bathroom. He tidied himself away from her eyes- or maybe he let herself clean up away from his. Huh. She hadn’t considered that option before. 

 

“You could stay a little, if you want,” he said crossing the room and stepping into his discarded sleep pants. “Until you’re cooled off.”

 

“I’m fine,” said Rey. Like she couldn’t cool off perfectly well on the walk back to her room. 

 

Ben shrugged, the scar over his right collar bone stretching with the movement. She’d marked him, permanently. She’d only wear the marks blooming on her hips for a week or two at most. “Really? You’re fine?” he asked, grabbing her around the waist and dropping her off the side of the bed. 

 

She wobbled when her feet hit the floor, and for a second was tempted to toss him away with the Force. The only thing that stopped her was the knowledge that, for all her training he was  _ so much better at it.  _

 

“Shaky,” he said assessingly. Ben pressed a finger to her breastbone and pushed (an echo of her hand on him earlier), and Rey glared at him when she had to step back to keep her balance. 

 

“Don’t be an ass,” she told him, bending to retrieve her undies and trousers. 

 

“I was being nice,” he said, settling into watch her dress, his dark eyes steady. “I said you could wait. You didn’t have to do this just to prove me wrong.”

 

_ Well, maybe he didn’t know her as well as she’d assumed.  _ “I don’t need to stay,” she said, lacing up the band that held her breasts.

 

“Fine.”

 

Neither of them gave voice to the next thought:  _ but you want to.  _

 

She wanted to stay, so she had to go. Rey stuffed her loose and tangled arm wraps into her pocket and buckled on her belt, the leather familiar and heavy beneath her fingers. 

 

“People will wonder about your arms, if they see,” said Ben. 

 

Rey shrugged and laced her boots. “They won’t see.”

 

Ben cocked his head to the side, his eyes narrowed. 

 

“You used to resist using the Force,” he said. “You wouldn’t have done this before.”

 

Rey turned to go, familiar enough with Ben’s apartment to be comfortable in the dark. “There’s a lot of things I wouldn’t have done before.”

 

~~~

 

Rey told her holo to set a ten minute timer as she stepped into the refresher. She’d spend all morning under the water if she could, asking her holo over and over why human fingers wrinkled under the spray. 

 

It never got old, hearing that early man may have hunted in water. They’d needed to grip things more tightly. That meant, in some way, they were  _ of  _ water. Life from life, and all that. 

 

As she dried she asked, “Holo, read my schedule for today.” 

 

_ Commander Rey, you have a meeting with Councilmen Poe and Finn, Councilwoman Rose, Representative Vashna, and Representative Muns at 0900. After the meeting’s completion, you’ve been requested to assist in the hangar as available.  _

 

“Thanks,” Rey told the screen currently propped against her sink. After a year with Artoo and BB and Threepio it seemed rude not to thank the voice that had provided her with information (even though she  _ knew  _ droids were something entirely different). “Where’s the meeting?”

 

_ Hanna City Capitol Building, Floor seven, Room 12284.  _

 

‘Got it,” said Rey, wiping the steam from her mirror. It was the same face that she’d become used to seeing in the mirrors of the  _ Falcon.  _ Same freckles and cheekbones and teeth. Same face shape. 

 

But her eyes- well. She and Poe had talked about it once, during the Witching Watch (a term Poe had coined, of course) when they were the only two awake on the  _ Falcon’s  _ bridge as the sleeping ship drifted in the black. He said it didn’t matter what  _ other  _ people thought. It was war, and it was necessary, but you didn’t look at yourself the same way. Not after you’ve killed someone. You meet your own eyes in the mirror and you  _ know what you are capable of.  _

 

Rey hung her wet towel over the mirror, tied her damp hair up by feel alone, and left the room. 

 

~~~

 

The conference table was wood, and therefore expensive. It shone in the light streaming through the room’s arched windows, and Rey could make out smudges where Finn’s elbows and hands had rested. 

 

“Hey!” he said, his face lighting up when she walked in the room. “How are you?” He pulled her into a tight hug and she let herself relax, a little. This she could want. Finn- he got her. He’d done bad things too. 

 

“I’m alright,” said Rey, pulling back to give Poe the one-armed hug he was clearly waiting for. Rose took hers next, all of them acting like they hadn’t seen her in three weeks as opposed to three days. “How are you?”

 

“Busy,” said Poe. “You wanna trade spots today? I’d love to get back under a plane.”

 

“I’m good,” said Rey, turning to the two people already seated on the other side of the table. 

 

“Rey, these are Representatives Vashna and Muns,” said Rose, gesturing. Rey nodded politely. “This is Commander Rey,” said Rose. 

 

(Maybe the lack of a family name only sounded odd in Rey’s ears.)

 

“We have heard of you,” said the tall, thin woman introduced as Muns. “Thank you, for all you’ve done.”

 

“Thank you,” Vashna nodded.

 

“Ah- you’re welcome,” said Rey, taking her seat. “Do you need my help with something?”

 

The question was directed at the newcomers, but she was looking and Poe and Rose. Finn, stars love him, was sitting next to her. 

 

“We have heard- rumors,” said Muns, carefully, steepling her fingers. “Non-compliance in our sector. Sentience Rights violations.”

 

The skin on Rey’s arms prickled. “What kind of violations?” she asked, like there was a least horrible answer.

 

The two representatives glanced at each other, lavender eyes meeting piercing apple green. Vashna looked back at Rey and inclined their head. “Before- before the war, my planet exported ceramics, primarily. Dangerous, hot, muddy work. Cheap labor helped to hold down cost…”

 

Rey didn’t know much about intergalactic economic theory, but she knew about cheap labor. 

 

“Slavers,” she said flatly. It wasn’t a question. 

 

“Yes,” said Vashna, thankfully not tiptoeing around the issue. “Certain sympathetic port captains think they might be back.”

 

“What do you want us to do?” asked Rey. “Last I heard, sector sovereignty was still up for discussion.” She leaned back in her chair, pushing it onto two legs, seeing what kind of reaction these Representatives would have. Neither seemed to care about her lack of board-room etiquette. 

 

“Sentience Rights aren’t negotiable, though,” said Rose, her chin set. “Everyone has a right to be free and safe and healthy.”

 

“Even when those rights interfere with the economy and established laws of individual planets?” asked Vashna, their alien eyes fixed and unblinking on Rose. 

 

“Yes,” she said, planting both hands on the shiny table and leaning forward. Poe put a palm between her shoulder blades and rubbed, just for a few seconds, but it was enough to make Rose blink and lean back. She turned towards Poe just slightly, like the flower for which she’d been named, absorbing comfort from Poe like rain. 

 

Rey looked away. 

 

Vashna shrugged one long shoulder. “I don’t disagree. But rights, and laws, and sovereignty- these things take time to settle, yes?” 

 

“Yes,” said Rey, thumping the legs of her chair back onto the floor. “So again- what do you want us to do?”

 

“Enforce your laws,” said Muns. “We currently don’t have the resources to do it ourselves.”

 

_ Enforce your laws.  _ Rey could picture it too easily now, now that the war had been won. Blood and bodies and tears.  _ Enforcement.  _ Welp. Can’t have enforcers without the Force, apparently. That must be where she came in. 

 

“We’ll talk about it,” said Rey, gesturing from her to Poe and Rose and Finn. Vashna’s eyes narrowed. 

 

“Thank you for bringing it to our attention,” said Poe, rising and nodding his head formally. After a short pause, Rey did as well. 

 

“All we ask,” said Muns, returning the slow nod before leaving the room with Vashna. 

 

Poe and Finn and Rose and Rey stood in silence, listening to their footsteps fading in the hall.

 

“Wow,” said Finn, the first word he’d contributed since they’d all sat down. 

 

“Wow indeed,” said Poe, dropping back into his chair bonelessly. “What the  _ hell.” _

 

“I can’t believe- I know these things take time- people have rights!” said Rose. 

 

Poe tugged her against him again. Rey looked out the window, watching one of the planet-side skimmers trundle by outside. The sky was close to an aqua color here; something about the atmosphere. Through the rippled glass of the windows she could almost pretend she was looking at the sea. 

 

“So- what do you want me to do when I go?” 

 

Rey didn’t resent asking questions like that anymore. A year with Leia, and a year on the  _ Falcon  _ with the entirety of the Resistance had taught her to think things over and to consider consequences for people other than herself. It had been an important lesson for a girl who’d lived alone in the desert. 

 

Finn bumped her shoulder with his. “You sound like you’ve already made up your mind to go.”

 

Rey reached between them and took his hand, giving it a squeeze. He was still the first real friend she’d made; the first with whom she didn’t need to compete. “But aren’t I?” she asked. “You three need to be here, and Ben-” she swallowed. “Ben needs to be here too, overseeing supplies to the outer sectors and helping with the ‘Troopers and- you know. Leading. I can fight. You  _ know  _ I can fight. But I need to know what you want me to do.”

 

Rose started to type ideas onto a holopad in front of her, talking of precedent for punishment, if they could maybe find someone to station in the old slaving posts, how to set up a sustainable system. 

 

Poe pinched the bridge of his nose and scrunched his brows before looking at Rey, his eyes a little sad. “It needs to be quiet,” he said. “But you already know that. We don’t have enough trained personnel to set up a presence on these planets. We don’t have the space to hold them here, and besides, they didn’t commit the crimes here.”

 

Rey nodded. 

 

“So it has to be stealthy, and it has to be permanent,” he said. “At least for now.”

 

“No,” said Rose, her hair swinging into her face as she snapped her head up. “No, you can’t do that; that’s no better than the raids the First Order would send out-”

 

“Is it?” asked Finn, quietly. Rey wanted to hug him. 

 

“You’re asking her to  _ kill people!”  _ Rose hissed, thumping a hand down on the table again. “You’re- you’re ordering a coup! This isn’t what we wanted, when we talked about the galaxy, it’s-”

 

“It’s a process,” said Poe. “Do you want these planets falling back on the slave trade routes? Because you know it happens. The Hutts didn’t start it, but they sure perfected the trafficking system.”

 

“I’ll do it,” said Rey. “Get me the information. I’ll take Silvia, and see if Cal and Mab are available.” 

 

Finn shifted uneasily next to her, but he didn’t let go of her hand. “I just- I mean, they were ‘Troopers; they’re trained for ops, but… um.”

 

He set his jaw like he was thinking, and Rey already understood. She’d lived on top of these people for a year; she knew. She pressed a kiss to Finn’s cheek and stood up, pulling him with her. 

 

“We can talk it over later,” she said. “Besides, doesn’t Your Eminence have more important things he needs to do?”

 

Finn grinned at her, all crinkling dark eyes and flashing white teeth. They’d gotten drunk together the first night after the Accords, all of them had, sprawled in the hangar of the Hanna City Capitol. They’d spent the night crying and laughing and making up ridiculous titles for themselves, still giddy over merely being alive. When Finn had announced, with a truly straight face, that he’d only answer to His Eminence from then on out, Rey had laughed so hard she’d puked. 

 

Then again. It could have been the booze. 

 

“Yeah, yeah, Your Forceship,” he said, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. (His name for her, only him.) “C’mon, Rose,” he said when she walked around the table to them. “Poe’s been hogging you.”

 

They walked out the door, Finn’s arm draped over her shoulders, hers around his waist. He was still wearing the jacket that had formerly been Poe’s. 

 

“They look happy,” Rey commented, watching them go. 

 

“They are,” said Poe breathily. “ _ We  _ are,” he added. 

 

“Good,” said Rey. 

 

He’d always been more perceptive than people gave him credit for. She could feel him now, his eyes scanning over her face, taking in the dark circles under her eyes and the fading tan and how her arm guards were wrapped just a little too tight. “What about you?” he asked softly. “Are you happy?”

 

“Yes,” said Rey immediately.  _ Of course she was happy; the kriffing war was finally over.  _

 

He raised one dark eyebrow but didn’t contradict her. “Look, about this mission-” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and paced over to the window. “It’s- Rose was right. It’s a coup, plain and simple.”

 

“And the only fighters we have are former ‘Troopers, and it isn’t fair to ask them to go back to that,” said Rey quietly. “They shouldn’t have to kill again. I knew that’s what Finn was going to say.”

 

“You shouldn’t have to, either,” said Poe quietly, looking back over. 

 

He held her gaze a little too long, and it was Rey who looked away. “It needs done,” she said. “We can’t set up a new system ‘til we break the old one, right?”

 

“It still isn’t fair to ask it of you. We can come up with another idea. That’s one thing this fucking war finally taught me. There’s always another way.”

 

What an optimistic idea. It wasn’t  _ true,  _ but it sounded nice. At the end of the day (at the end of the war, end of the world), there was only one recipe for water. There was only one way something would fall if you dropped it, and sometimes there really only was one choice.

 

“I can  _ do  _ it,” Rey insisted. She realized she was balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to react, and forced herself to relax, to inhabit her body, to be  _ here.  _

 

“Do you want to?” asked Poe, still looking at her. 

 

Rey rolled her eyes at him. “You’re asking me if I want to kill people,” she said. “Stars, Dameron, how far gone do you think I am?”

 

“No! No, Rey, that’s not- I know you don’t.”

 

“It needs done,” she said. 

 

It wasn’t a question, but he answered it anyway. “Yeah,” he said. “It does.”

 

Rey nodded, sharp and pointed. “Alright, then.” Poe didn’t know, but she wouldn’t mind going off-planet, at least for a bit. It would give her some space from the eternal temptation that was a reformed Ben Solo. 

 

Poe projected his movements as he crossed towards her, giving her the opportunity to step back if she wanted to. And she  _ should,  _ but instead she let him wrap his arms around her and press his chin into her shoulder. (It would make  _ him _ feel better.) He smelled a little like Finn (no surprise there), and the leather of his fancy new jacket was cool under her cheek. Poe was warm and solid and smelled nice, and she hugged him back. 

 

He was- he was good, without Rose’s idealism and Finn’s fledgling morals. She liked him. She was happy for him. 

 

“I wish you’d come to dinner with us sometime,” he said, stepping back. “I know Finn misses you.”

 

“You trying to start a harem, Dameron?” Rey asked, turning it into a joke. 

 

He grinned, dimples flashing as she moved to the door. “Hell no,” he said. “I’m tired enough at it is.”

 

“Yeah,” said Rey, listening to their boots thud down the hallway. That was reassuring- the thud of Poe’s boots, the same ones he’d had that day they’d met over Crait. Everything else was new and shiny, but not those. He’d kept his shit-kicking boots. 

 

“We’re all tired,” she finished. 


	2. Counter-arguments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Previously on _Stellar Outcasts_ :**  
> -Rey went to Ben’s room sneakily, they had sex.  
> -It’s unclear whether or not there are feelings involved with their arrangement  
> -Rey sat through a meeting with Finn/Poe/Rose. (The three of them are in a relationship)  
> -Rey has been given orders to go enforce the new Council’s laws while Finn, Poe, Rose, and Ben run the new government
> 
> PS. Nancy you totally inspired me to do summaries of the previous chapter, thank you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all! Things have to get worse before they can get better. 
> 
> SPOILERY CONTENT WARNING:   
> There's less than thirty-seconds of meanly intended vaginal fingering during a consensual sex scene. Does that make this dub-con? Sure. I'm calling it twenty seconds of mean, dub-con vaginal fingering which is a hell of a sentence.

Ben found Rey in the hangar with heavy clods of grey clay still stuck to her boots. Dameron was talking to her off to the side, out of the way of the crews running in and out, the mechanics refitting old First Order units, and eavesdroppers in general. 

 

She looked good, even though he knew she couldn’t have slept in more than a day. Her hair (longer now) was neatly braided down her back, her seamed canvas jacket almost concealed the blasters that were holstered under her arms, and her saber was still at her side. She wasn’t hurt, then. If she were, even kriffing Dameron would have taken her to the med bay by now. 

 

Ben knew the moment Rey noticed him crossing to her. Her hazel eyes went wide, just a little, and then  _ shuttered.  _ Gone was the girl who’d spit at him while restrained on Starkiller Base; gone was the girl who’d snarled in the snow, and gone was the woman who’d fought with him while Snoke’s body smoldered on his throne. 

 

This woman knew how important it was to hold yourself inside. 

 

“Chairman Solo,” she said, nodding. He  _ hated  _ it; he wanted her to call him ‘Ben’ the way she did when they were alone. She called Poe by  _ his  _ name. 

 

Poe didn’t stop what he’d been saying. “Look, I’m fully aware of the fact that I’m on the wrong side of the conversation- I’m supposed to be the one  _ being  _ lectured, not the one doing the lecturing.”

 

“Did I disobey orders?” Rey asked, her eyes cool and focused on Poe’s face. 

 

“No- but kriff, Rey, you crumpled their ship like a used air filter; everyone will know it was you!”

 

“Everyone will learn I killed people?” asked Rey, raising one tawny eyebrow. Ben had to admit, he kind of liked that look on her face when it wasn’t directed at him. “ _ Shocking _ ,” Rey added. 

 

She shifted her weight onto the other foot and looked up at the shadowy ceiling of the hangar with a huff. “Look, Poe- I thought the whole point of the mission was to make a statement. ‘No slavers tolerated, by order of the Council’. Right?”

 

“Right,” said Poe slowly, his head slightly cocked as he studied Rey’s face. She was looking to the side, her face bored, ostensibly watching a couple techs sautering a landing kit. 

 

“Well, thanks,” said Poe finally. “I’m glad you’re home safe.”

 

Rey didn’t say anything to that, and when Poe turned to leave she slid her gaze to Ben. Her eyes were whiskey-warm and mirror-shallow. 

 

“I didn’t think it was true,” he said slowly, taking her elbow and steering her towards the entrance that arched above them like a gaping mouth. 

 

“Didn’t think what was true?” Rey asked, yanking her elbow out of his grasp. She walked willingly enough, following him out into the little cluster of grass and trees that framed the Capitol grounds. “That I was home?”

 

“No,” said Ben, refusing to rise to her mocking tone. “I didn’t think it was true, when Rose and Finn told me.”

 

“They told you?” asked Rey, glancing at him.  _ Ah, that got a reaction. Worried your friends aren’t as loyal as you’d hoped?  _

 

“I overheard them whispering about it. Finn can’t be quiet for anything,” said Ben. It was autumn in Hanna City, and the pine needles were beginning to show silver at the tips. They stopped in the shade of one, massive branches arching overhead. 

 

“What do you want, Ben,” asked Rey. Her voice was flat, and her eyes were back on him. He could feel her annoyance through the bond- it was strong, then. Strong enough to be shared. 

 

“Why,” he said. “Why’d you do it?”

 

She stood a little straighter: tall for a woman, with long muscles she’d earned through labor. Her desert tan had faded now; she was nearly the same pale shade as anyone else who’d spent a year in space. He could  _ see  _ her falling into soldier mode, preparing for a report. 

 

“I was ordered to travel to Shydra to investigate the reactivation of slave trade in Shydra City. After initial scouting, performed with two witnesses, I went to the source of the operation, freed those wrongfully imprisoned, contacted the local authorities, and ‘made proper examples of-’”

 

“Rey!” said Ben, taking her sharp chin in his hand and forcing her to meet her eyes. “You left the slavers dead, impaled on the docks, and their ship had been crushed in on itself.  _ You  _ were the only thing who could have done that.  _ Why.”  _

 

“To deter further crime, sir,” said Rey, her voice mocking. “It’s necessary,” she tacked on, less combative. 

 

Ben still wanted to spar with her until she was trembling and sweaty, or to take her up to his bed and get her in the same state.  

 

“Why the hell do you care, anyway?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest. “Worried my count is going to compete with yours? Because I’m pretty sure that can’t ever happen.” 

 

_ Good one,  _ he thought, watching the flush on her cheeks.  _ Remind me that whatever you do, you’ll always be better than me. Like I could ever forget.  _

 

“No,” he said. “Not at all.” 

 

They eyed each other warily, under the branches of the giant tree, one of the last ones left on the planet. Urbanization had taken the rest.

 

“I was bored without you last night.” It was a lie, and also a gesture of peace. He’d actually been relieved to get more than six hours of sleep; relieved to only have to manage the turbulent thoughts clouding his own head. But still- in a way, he had missed her. 

 

She smiled at him, her dimples flashing. “Yeah? Probably we can fix that for you tonight, Councilman.”

 

“Good,” said Ben, voice even. It was going to be a  _ long  _ afternoon of meetings. 

 

~~~

 

She came to him as the sun set, the honey-colored light on her skin a testament to how badly she wanted him. In the amber glow of autumnal evening he could see the freckles scattered over her cheekbones, their presence faded away beneath the pallor of deep-space travel. False-sun lamps can only do so much. 

 

“You’re early,” Ben told her, standing from his usual spot on the edge of the bed. Sometimes he forgot that she was so much smaller than him: her signature on the Force was like the horizon, unfathomable to the human mind. When he saw her around the Capitol she was almost always in motion, seemingly that much more  _ alive  _ than those around her; dragging them along in her contrail. 

 

“I thought you might be tired,” said Rey, unlacing her boots. “Figured if I came up early you could pass out early, too.”

 

“You calling me an old man?” Ben asked, the corner of his mouth twitching. “You think I go to bed before the sun is down?”

 

Rey just shrugged as she shimmied her pants down around her hips. 

 

Even as perfunctory as her movements always were, watching Rey undress never failed to send a thrill through Ben. She was so strong and beautiful and in tune with her body, all lean grace and soft skin over long tendons and a shocking lack of self-consciousness. And she came to  _ him.  _

 

He was already half-hard when she padded to the bed and wedged herself back between his knees. 

 

“Want me on top again?” she asked, dragging a finger along the underside of his cock. 

 

“Not yet,” said Ben, putting his hands on the gentle curve of her waist and tugging her closer. Yellow-green bruises marked her hips, fingerprints scattered like raindrops over skin. 

 

“On my back?” asked Rey. 

 

Ben wondered if she did this on purpose; if she kept this clinical and transactional just to annoy him. He pulled her into his lap, her knees falling open to bracket his hips.

 

Rey glared down at him, but one of her hands was toying with the hair at the nape of his neck, slowly wrapping it around and around a finger. “What was that for?” she asked. 

 

Ben stuck the first two fingers of his right hand into his mouth, sucked on them, and then slid them over the short-cropped curls of her pussy and to the spot where he knew her clit was hiding. “To get you here,” he said. “Now answer my question: why are you always in such a hurry?”

 

Rey shrugged one freckled shoulder but didn’t stop playing with his hair. “It’s easier like this, isn’t it? It’s not like we  _ need  _ to fool around.”

 

Ben tapped her clit with his fingers in punishment before resuming. “Most think that foreplay is a need,” he said, managing to make his tone almost bored. “Lubrication is required for the kind of friction generated by sex.”

 

“Yeah? Waste of water out in the desert,” said Rey. 

 

Beneath his hand Ben felt her- twitch. It was almost the absence of movement, or maybe the  _ idea  _ of movement. He wondered if she was stopping her hips from chasing his hand, from relaxing into the two of them together. 

 

That, in conjunction with their absolutely pig-headed conversation, pushed Ben over his (admittedly short) drop into anger. He held Rey’s hips tighter, jutted his chin up to meet her gaze, and slid those spit-slicked fingers back and into her. The impact of his knuckles against her pelvis jolted her in his lap, and her not-wet-enough cunny clenched around his fingers.

 

“Fuck!” said Rey, shifting and wriggling to get away from him.

 

Ben let her go, and she flopped back onto the floor. 

 

“What the  _ hell,  _ Solo?” she asked, her eyebrows drawn together over truly furious eyes. 

 

“You argued that lubrication was unnecessary,” he said cooly. “I offered a counter argument.”

 

“That hurt,” she said, narrowing her eyes. 

 

_ Kriff,  _ there she was. Gone was the soldier, and gone was the woman who’d learned to hide confusion and dislike behind a mask of indifference.  _ Here she was, the girl he’d heard so much about.  _

 

“I know,” he said simply. 

 

Rey kept her gaze trained on him, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides. “Don’t do that again,” she said finally. 

 

“Finger you? Or finger-fuck you dry?” asked Ben. For a second he felt like Kylo again; enjoying the swirling anger and resentment emanating her. He hadn’t needed to ask, he’d  _ wanted  _ to.

 

“Fuck me dry to make a point,” said Rey, still standing stiffly in front of him. He could feel her wavering towards the door. 

 

“I won’t,” said Ben. He patted his thigh. “Come here. I’ll make it up to you.”

 

Rey huffed a sigh and walked back to Ben, resuming her position over his lap. At first they were content to sit together, Ben’s fingers slowly and surely circling, circling, circling. It was pleasant to be against someone else, warm and relaxed. Ben suspected that both of them were more accustomed to touch being something associated with violence as opposed to comfort or pleasure. 

 

“Why me?” he asked her when he felt dampness beginning to gather on his fingertips. 

 

“I- I needed this,” said Rey. “Better when it isn’t my fingers.”

 

“I agree,” said Ben, rewarding her with a tweak of one soft-pink nipple. “But why  _ me.”  _

 

Rey rolled her hips and glared at him with impatience, but he had her on the hook now; had her chasing pleasure. “Because you understand- all of it,” she said. “And besides-”

 

She reached between them and palmed his cock through the sleep-pants he still wore. 

 

“-Probably you’d have felt me having sex anyway. Might as well share it with you in person, right?”

 

Ben huffed a moan against the wing of her collar bone. “Fair point,” he said. “I wanna put my mouth on you,” he told her before pressing a kiss into the shadowed curve of her jaw.

 

“Alright,” said Rey, already rolling off him onto the bed. 

 

He’d never known her to turn it down. Stage One of his hastily cobbled-together plan was complete. 

 

Rey lay on her back, her head against his pillow, and Ben shucked off his pants before sprawling, belly-down, in the already-open cradle of her legs. She smelled like earth, and life, and salt, and it was getting too easy for him to settle there, suckling at her clit, already anticipating the little song of huffs and groans and whimpers that she would sing for him. It was all getting too easy. 

 

“Ben,” she murmured, carding her fingers through his hair. “ _ Ben.” _

 

He didn’t stop laving his tongue over her clit, back and forth, back and forth. Instead he  _ hmmed  _ his question into her pussy, enjoying the full-body shiver that elicited. 

 

“Need you in me,” she said, tugging at his hair. “C’mon.”

 

_ Stage Two.  _

 

Ben wiped his face on the inside of her thigh, pushed his chest off the bed, and rolled her over onto her belly before she had a chance to see the move coming. They hadn’t tried it like this, and if there was any common thread through Ben’s life, it was that he was willing to take risks. 

 

“Alright?” he asked, sliding two fingers into the slick heat of her cunt. Every time he wondered how he wasn’t burned by her. 

 

Her hips undulated, rocking into the mattress, and she huffed into the pillow, “ _ Yes, Ben, c’mon.”  _

 

Ben nudged the head of his cock against her wet heat, shivering a little at even that amount of contact, and slowly worked himself home. 

 

“Oh,” said Rey, her voice small and high. 

 

Ben huffed into her hair at that, half smile and half noiseless moan, because holy kriffing shit it was  _ tight like this. “ _ Good?” he asked. 

 

Rey canted her hips in answer, but that was about all she was able to do. Like this, wedged beneath him with his cock in her cunny, she wasn’t able to get much traction. It was delicious. 

 

Ben started his rhythm out strong, one arm underneath Rey and locked onto Rey’s shoulder so that when he thrust into her, he rocked her body into his own hands. She was making high little keening noises into the pillow every time he slid home, and here soon he was going to have to start listing the local star systems in alphabetical order if he wanted this to last any kind of time at all. 

 

“Ben,” Rey murmured, throaty and low, and he couldn’t stop himself anymore. He braced himself over her, one hand splayed between her shoulder blades (and oh kriffing  _ stars  _ the span of his hand nearly went from shoulder to shoulder, he was just-  _ consuming  _ her like this) and slowed his pace to a teasing, luxurious roll. 

 

“Ben,” she said again, more sharply this time. “Stop messing around-”

 

“I like it like this,” he said, rolling his hips into hers, glancing down to admire the way the jut of his hips pressed against the swell of her ass. 

 

“Buh- but-”

 

He watched her fingers clench in the sheets by her head, and he was  _ so glad  _ she couldn’t see the grin he knew he was wearing. 

 

“Do you like it like this?” He added an extra bit of force to this thrust, letting his toes dig into the mattress for traction. 

 

“ _ Yes,”  _ she admitted, her voice throaty. 

 

That was all the permission Ben needed. “I like it like this,” he repeated. “Like  _ you  _ like this. I can feel every inch of you when I sink in slow; can feel the hot drag of you over me when I slide back out. That’s how I know you like it, sweetheart. All hot and wet around me, those little muscles clenching like they want to suck me in and keep me there.”

 

Rey’s eyes squinched shut, and he watched as she buried her face in the crook of her arm. Her ass, though, was rising to meet him on  _ his  _ rhythm. She wasn’t trying to drive the pace up, not yet. 

 

Ben kept talking. “Your back is so pretty- it’s strong, and flexible, just like you, and covered with a whole universe of freckles. I remember- I remember the first time we did this, when you took of your tunic, I wanted to lick every inch of you, to find out what all those stars tasted like-”

 

_ Fuck, he was turning himself on.  _

 

He rebalanced himself on his elbows and slid one hand down between Rey’s sweat-slicked skin and the cotton of the sheet beneath her, and crooked his fingers up over her clit. She started, and then ground down against his hand, little groans and keens falling off her lips like blessings. 

 

“Feel that?” he asked. “You’re so wet for me, Rey, all for me, all over my hand and cock. So soft, so good, such a good-”

 

She ground down again and then came around him with a high whine, her spine going rigid and her core going liquid. It was enough to not only make Ben stop talking, but also to forget how to speak Common Tongue. Forever. 

 

With her loose-limbed and pliant around him, it only took Ben a few haphazard thrusts to feel that nearly-painful tingling in his balls. He spilled into her with a grunt, his hair in his face and his lips by her cheek. 

 

He thought his ears might be ringing. 

 

“Okay?” he asked hoarsely when he was able to get more than an ounce of air into his lungs. He still hadn’t moved, was still wedged over and inside her. 

 

“Okay,” she repeated, nestling her cheek against one of his pillows. He’d sleep on that, later, and smell her shampoo. 

 

“Be right back,” he told her. “Don’t move.”

 

He walked to the ‘fresher on unsteady legs, used the toilet while the water in the sink warmed, and then took her a clean wash rag. “Here,” he said, pressing it against her labia. She’d shied away from this at first, too, her eyes squinty and suspicious. Now he wasn’t sure whether or not she liked it, but at least she didn’t protest. 

 

( _ “Why?” she’d asked.  _

 

_ “So you don’t get spunk all over my bed,” he’d replied. The practicality of that answer seemed to suit her. It also didn’t seem fair to come, roll off, and leave her with the mess. _ )

 

“That was different,” she huffed when she rolled over onto her back. 

 

Ben couldn’t stop himself from dropping a kiss onto her flat belly. “Good different?” he asked, trying to squash down the hope he’d been feeling since she’d hissed at him years ago in the snow. 

 

“Good different,” she admitted grudgingly. 

 

He watched her dress in silence, once again stuffing her tangled arm guards into the pockets of her pants. He wondered why she still wore them. She could have long sleeved tunics, or jackets, and it wasn’t like she was working around a lot of jagged scrap these days. (Although she’d probably needed them on his father’s ship. She’d probably needed antibiotics and some kind of exotic booster inoculation, too.)

 

“See you,” she said before moving gracefully out of his rooms. 

 

So that had been a success. Good-different, and she’d even admitted it. 

 

He wondered what it would take to get her to stay. Probably he’d kill himself trying, but kriff. What a way to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't hate me? 
> 
> A sincere thank-you to all who are supporting this story! If we aren't already pals, you're welcome to come chat with me on twitter [@caseydoesfandom](https://twitter.com/caseydoesfandom) .
> 
> [As always and forever amen, all the thanks and love to [Violet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violetwilson/pseuds/Violetwilson/works) for the encouragement, friendship, and beta-read.]


	3. Secondhand Intimacies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Previously on _Stellar Outcasts_ :**  
> -Ben confronted Rey after her mission (during which she displayed the dead bodies of state enemies and human traffickers.)  
> -Rey went to Ben’s room for sex  
> -He was rough with her after she stubbornly argued with him  
> -They had softer sex than normal and Rey labels it “good different”

There was another group trying to rise to power a couple days from Chandrila. 

 

They were calling themselves the Sons of Order, and they’d successfully taken over two of the major port towns in the Seyfert System. More than fifty innocent (well, for a given measure of ‘innocent’) bureaucrats had died during the uprising, and the Sons of the Order were turning away the ships that attempted to come in with aid. 

 

Once more Rey was sent out to return some kind of balance to the galaxy, and once more she returned with boots that squelched blood. 

 

Again, she returned with more guilt than she ever thought she’d carry. It wasn’t necessarily guilt over the deaths, it was more… she felt guilty for being so relieved to go on these missions; to get away from the polish and majesty of this educated and bustling modern court. Despite the nature of the tasks she was sent on, she was grateful for them. She was grateful for having something to  _ do,  _ something that wasn’t bolting parts on second-hand ships. 

 

If she looked too hard at herself, Rey would say that she was afraid of being left behind by the galaxy she’d fought so hard to save. 

 

It was late evening planetside when she and Silvia returned to Hanna City. 

 

“Rey-” said Silvia as she switched off the coms and nav, finishing their post-flight check. She looked over at Rey in the copilot’s seat, her blue eyes a shock of color in the brown of her face. “Rey- you can say no to these missions. We could find something else to do.”

 

_ Silvia thought she was guilty because she’d killed people. How many people had been on the First Order ships she’d pulled from the air? Fifty each? A hundred? A thousand? What was a dozen more.  _

 

“Thanks,” said Rey, moving to stand by the as-yet unopened hatch. 

 

Silvia sighed and hit the overhead release. “Fine,” she said. “But if you want to talk about it, or just- you know, grab a drink sometime, let me know.”

 

“Okay,” said Rey, surprised by the offer. That might be… nice.

 

“Well, have a good one,” said Silvia, tromping down the ramp and beginning to weave her way through the hangar, dodging techs and ships and droids. 

 

“Commander Rey,” said the holo chip on Rey’s wrist. “You’re wanting for debriefing.”

 

“Where?” asked Rey, checking the external hull of their ship one last time before resealing the hatch and stepping away. 

 

“The fifth floor common room, north wing of the capital quarters.”

 

“Patch me through to Poe,” said Rey to her wrist. It was… odd, having this little thing with her all the time. It had been designed for those who couldn’t see and it- in the desert, someone who couldn’t see couldn’t live. Not long, at least. And here, less than a galaxy away, was a solution. One that had been modified for her, and her illiterate brain. 

 

“Rey!” said Poe’s voice, tinny in the tiny speakers. 

 

“Hey,” said Rey. “Do I have time to clean up first, or..?” she trailed off and glanced over her shoulder at the rust-colored flakes of dirt she was leaving behind. A tiny, cube-shaped droid was angrily following her and scrubbing, whistling in its displeasure. “Sorry,” she whispered to it. 

 

“Sure!” said Poe, sounding cheerful. “We’ll be up here for another hour or so.”

 

“Great,” said Rey. “Be there in a bit.”

 

She ducked into her set of rooms, stripping on the way to her ‘fresher. The arm guards would have to go; like her boots they’d taken in their share of stains. Thankfully, most of the blood wasn’t hers. 

 

It was odd stuff, blood, thought Rey as she stepped under the spray. For a moment, a contented one, she stood under the water with her face tipped up, letting the full force of the shower was over her skin. It always felt like some kind of miracle; some kind of baptism. After a handful of still, happy breaths, Rey got down to the business of washing. 

 

Blood fought to stay together even after it had dried; long after it had left the host it was supposed to keep alive. It didn’t scrub away like other dirt: it flaked, the cells locked together and  _ striving  _ even in death. Probably that meant something, somewhere. Maybe it was some kind of… biological inertia. What is alive wishes to go on living, unless acted upon by an outside force. 

 

In this case the force (the Force) had been Rey.

 

She didn’t luxuriate overlong in the heat of the ‘fresher, (despite how good it felt on her sore shoulders) and opted to let her hair dry down. What was the point of tying it up for an hour when Ben would only pull it down again? 

 

“Still there?” she asked Poe as she left her room in the soft moccasins Rose had given her.  

 

“Yep!” said Poe, and Rey could hear the laugh in his voice. Kriff. 

 

“Rey!” said Finn when she walked into the living area.  It was beautiful- the same stone as the rest of the building, and decorated with nice furniture in clean, simple lines. The space was lit with glowing, jewel-toned glass lamps, and part of Rey who’d heard stories about underwater cities thought it might look something like this: glowing lamps scattered like treasure, their light reflecting off specs in the granite of the walls.

 

Finn toasted her with a glass of deep-red wine and grinned a well-hydrated smile. “Everything go okay?”

 

Rey tickled the side of his neck as she walked by him to the empty chair by Poe. “Yeah, I’m okay you goof. You two look like you’re doing okay.”

 

Finn shifted on the short couch so most his weight was leaned against Rose. 

 

“I am excellent,” he told her, his eyes lazy and smirk wry. 

 

“The representatives from the Haymin System signed our Sentience Rights Act,” said Rose, taking a Rey-sized gulp from her own glass. “It’s gonna pass, Rey. We’re finally going to have some kind of galaxy-wide law that we can enforce when people decide to just- just-”

 

“Decide that their comfort is more important than everyone else’s,” said Poe. He was looking at Rose fondly, his eyes soft. It was a look Rey hadn’t seen him wear until the Trouble Trio had started bunking together on the Falcon. 

 

“Congratulations,” said Rey, looking around. Maybe there was wine left. She could use some wine. She was tired and antsy and her shoulder ached. 

 

“So- was your day as good as ours?” asked Finn, before immediately blushing and stuttering over himself to add, “I mean, was it successful too? Not that, you know. Your day was  _ good.”  _

 

It should be reassuring, that Finn (of all people) could forget she was a killer. It should be, but it wasn’t. 

 

“My day… was a success,” Rey agreed. “But we have to talk about it.”

 

Finn didn’t move from his spot on Rose’s shoulder, and she didn’t set down her wine. 

 

Poe turned to Rey a little, and she assumed he was the most sober of the bunch. “What happened?” he asked. 

 

Rey slouched back and let her head rest against the plush, leather-covered seat of the chair. “I… I got the nest of people who controlled the ports on Batin and Yardek. But they were in communication with other groups, all local things, swapping ideas and stories. I think Silvia downloaded the comms from the first place we stopped when I… went into the second.”

 

“So you’re saying that this is going to happen again,” said Rose. 

 

“Yes,” said Rey, still slouched back, eyes on the ceiling. “It’s going to happen again.”

 

The room was quiet, and Rey let her eyes close, let her spine go slightly slack. She’d done her job today. 

 

“Well,” said Poe slowly. “Today- it should be a warning to them, right? And on most of the planets, the existing police force should be enough to squash down rebellions like that.”

 

“Dude, do you hear yourself?” asked Finn, his voice thick with laughter. 

 

“If only Leia could see me now,” said Poe, his voice warm. Rey nodded to herself. She’d be so proud of Poe- and Ben. She’d be proud of all of them, working so hard to make a system that the politicians of her time couldn’t. Maybe there was a silver lining to all this: they were truly able to start from scratch. There was no Senate to appease or Republic to convince. The First Order had scorched the ground, and from those ashes the Council would be born. 

 

Eventually. From what Rey had heard, no birth was painless. 

 

“At least we know what to look for,” said Rose. “We can be prepared. Now, back to celebrating! It’s been a productive day.”

 

“Is there any wine left?” asked Rey, sitting up straight. 

 

Poe nodded his head toward the back corner of the room. There was a little glass cabinet there, the facets reflecting the colored lights like tears, and on the cabinet stood two dark bottles of wine. “Help yourself,” he said. 

 

“Any for you, Councilman?” asked Rey as she walked by. 

 

“No thanks,” he said. “Someone has to make sure these two don’t get lost on the way back home.”

 

“Like I would get lost in the building,” said Finn, all prim, false-effrontery. 

 

Rose giggled. Rose actually  _ giggled.  _ “You have the sense of direction of a nimming,” she teased. 

 

Rey was glad her back was to them as she poured herself a deep glass of wine. 

 

“What’s on the agenda for tomorrow?” she asked, pacing around the perimeter of the room to look at the image hung on the wall. It was an aerial view of some other planet, one with deep pink waters lapping against a crystalline shore. Rey hoped it was real- she’d like to go there someday.

 

“More meetings, more arguments, more convincing people that we all have some basic human rights,” said Poe dryly. “Hence the drinking tonight.”

 

“Well you’re doing a good-- job,” said Rey, turning around and startling at what she found there. 

 

Finn and Rose were in profile to her, and Finn had moved to sit on the floor between Rose’s legs. His temple rested on one of her knees, his eyes were closed, and her fingers were kneading the spot where his skull met spine. He made a little strangled noise of pleasure, and Rose  _ hmmed  _ a response, apparently knowing without words what Finn needed. 

 

It was so- she’d have been more comfortable if she’d turned around to find Finn naked, or his face shoved between Rose’s thigh. This was something- this was something that she wasn’t supposed to see, this was  _ so much worse.  _

 

Rey glanced at Poe, knowing she looked shocked, and expected to meet his sheepish gaze, some kind of little  _ I just couldn’t stop them!  _ grin. No- he was gazing at his lovers, his posture relaxed and his face so damn open. Everything he was feeling traveled across his features like clouds across the sea: love and hope and amusement and contentment. 

 

They were a unit, three parts into one system, and Rey- she shouldn’t  _ be  _ here, this wasn’t something people were supposed to witness. She’d make her excuses and seek Ben out and get this shipwreck of a day back on track. 

 

Instead, what came out of her mouth was, “Stars, get a  _ fucking room.”  _

 

Finn jolted upright, his eyes snapping open, and Rose and Poe’s heads whipped around to look at her. 

 

“What?” asked Poe, one eyebrow raised. 

 

“Ah- Rey?” asked Rose, her face scrunched in concern. 

 

She needed to explain herself. She should apologize and laugh it off. 

 

She didn’t. What Rey was feeling, overwhelmingly, was  _ betrayal.  _ And that wasn’t something she didn’t feel like looking at too closely. 

 

“Fuck  _ off _ ,” she snarled. On her way to the door she swallowed down every drop of her wine, throatful and throatful of the stuff. As she walked out into the hallway and turned towards the stairs to go somewhere,  _ anywhere  _ else, she collided with a chest approximately the same size and texture as a wall. 

 

“Rey!” said Ben, surprised, putting a hand out to steady her. 

 

It was too late. She’d been holding a handful of delicate, expensive glass when she’d run into the length of Ben Solo, and now she had a handful of shards. 

 

He followed her gaze to her hand. “Ah, hell Rey,” he said, taking her by her elbow. “Come on, I’ll get a med-tech-”

 

“ _ I’m fine,”  _ Rey hissed at him, one minute away from sticky, hot tears of absolute mortification. 

 

One of Ben’s eyebrows rose nearly to his hairline, and he looked slowly from her, to her hand, to the tablea of Rose, Poe, and Finn inside the sitting room. “Right,” he said shortly. “Well, fine or not, you aren’t going to be able to fight when that gets infected and swells up to the size of a hoopafish. Come on.”

 

This time he took her elbow and dragged her down the hall to the stairwell. The only good thing (the only thing Rey could think) was that nobody else had been around to witness this disaster. 

 

Once they were in the stairwell Ben stopped moving. “Do you want to go to the medbay, or do you want a med-droid to come to my room?”

 

“How about I go to my room and get some tweezers?” Rey suggested, struggling not to clench her fingers tighter. It seemed to be some kind of reflex. Palm hurts? Protect with curled fingers!

 

“No,” said Ben, too calm. Rey had had him pegged as the kind of guy who’d have a small aneurysm everytime the plan went FUBAR. 

 

Rey looked up at the spiraling stairwell and took a deep breath through her nose, trying to hold off tears a little longer. “Your room. Droid.”

 

“I’ll call it now,” said Kylo, picking up her left wrist and speaking into her little tiny holo watch.

 

The droid was waiting when they got to Ben’s door, and it whirred into the room after them, a little arm coming out to prod at Rey’s hand. 

 

“Wait,” said Ben to the droid, nudging it with the toe of his boot. “You,” he said to Rey. “Sit on the edge of the bed.”

 

Since there weren’t that many other options, and the bedside would give the droid a place to work (and since she really would like someone else to be in charge of her shitty life for ten minutes, even if she’d never admit it) Rey sat. 

 

Ben came out of his ‘fresher with a towel, which he draped across Rey’s lap. “Set your hand on you knee,” he said, and Rey did, setting her hand down palm up. 

 

The droid beeped, and Ben nodded. “Alright,” he said. 

 

A needle pricked Rey’s wrist, and numbness spread almost instantly down to Rey’s bloody fingers. “I fought eleven guys today,” she said, pointedly  _ not looking  _ at the little set of claws pulling glass from her skin. “Eleven. And didn’t get a scratch on me. A few bruises, sure, but no blood.”  _ None of my own.  _

 

“Life’s like that,” said Ben, leaning against the opposite wall and watching the droid with his arms crossed. “Want to tell me what had you tearing out of the room like that anyway? I’d just gotten the message that you were briefing the others.”

 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Rey. She looked studiously at the floor. 

 

“Yeah?” said Ben. “I’ll just find out from one of them. Might as well tell me first.”

 

Rey glanced at the med-droid. “How about instead, I suck you off,” she said, looking at him through her eyelashes the way she knew he liked. 

 

“No,” said Ben calmly. “I’m going to find out, Rey.”

 

“I just-” tears were threatening  _ again,  _ fucking dammit. “I don’t want to talk about it. But if you want to watch the vid, I won’t stop you.”

 

Ben cocked his head, studying her, and Rey looked away. She didn’t need to give him this. She didn’t need him to see her embarrassment. 

 

He queued up the security footage, and the droid smeared some heavy paste over Rey’s palm and fingers. All of the big pieces were out, but it still seemed early to put bacta on her hand. 

 

She could see on Ben’s face when he got to the part where she... said all that to them. His brows furrowed, and his gaze flicked from the screen to her and back again. 

 

The paste on her hand was hardening, turning rubbery, and slowly (and probably painfully, but she couldn’t feel it) the droid peeled off the hardened mask. Tiny slivers of glass were embedded in it. 

 

“Wow,” said Ben. “That- that was a me-level fuck-up.”

 

“ _ No _ , really?”

 

“Yeah, really,” said Ben. “You overreacted. You hurt your friends, and they don’t know what they did wrong.”

 

“They didn’t do anything wrong,” said Rey automatically. Now the droid was scanning her hand with a brilliant orange light, and occasionally plunging needle-thin tweezers into a wound. 

 

“You thought they were doing something then,” said Ben. 

 

Rey didn’t respond. Finn and Rose (and Poe, by proxy) hadn’t done anything wrong other than- than broadcast their weaknesses. Things you loved could be taken away. Things you  _ needed  _ could stop being available, so then where were you? Scrambling, or vulnerable, or scared or sick. 

 

It was much safer not to need. It was much safer not to  _ want.  _

 

“They were all- all over each other, and it surprised me,” said Rey. The droid was smearing something else over her hand, now, and a different compartment dispensed a rubber glove.  _ Wear until 0900 tomorrow,  _ a recorded voice droned. Rey pulled on the glove, and both she and Ben watched the little bot roll away. 

 

“That didn’t surprise you,” said Ben, still standing against the wall with his arms folded across his chest. “You’ve seen them like that before; you’ve seen them all over each other. Hell, you and I have both seen them grabbing at each other under tables. What changed.”

 

Rey wasn’t doing this. She stood up and  _ wobbled.  _ The traitorous little kriffer must have doped her. Only explanation. 

 

“Sit,” said Ben, his voice deep and big and commanding. 

 

She didn’t sit. But she didn’t leave, either. 

 

“You saw them together,” said Ben, his voice low and measured. “You saw them being  _ sweet  _ to each other, being  _ kind,  _ and you froze. I’ve seen you lined up against ten to one odds, with every last one of them more armoured than you, and you yelled at them. You stuck that hard chin in the air and dared them to come at you. 

 

“But this- your friend on the floor, being   _ intimate….”  _

 

In the dim room his eyes glittered at her, the reflective irises of a nocturnal predator. 

 

_ Leave,  _ Rey’s hindbrain told her.  _ Escape the threat.  _

 

Her pride wasn’t going to let her back down. Not like this. 

 

“They were soft, and kind, and intimate in a way that had nothing to do with sex,” said Ben, his voice plowing over her, toppling any protest she could cobble together. “And you hated them for it.”

 

Rey didn’t say anything. Whatever she did, anything she said, he’d read into it. 

 

“Why does that scare you?” he asked, his voice soft now, the serpent in the garden. 

 

Rey squared her shoulders, looked him in the eyes, and gave him the only answer she could: “Because wanting things gets you killed,” she said, and then she was moving, striding through his quarters and into the hall, down the stairs, and out into the night. 

 

Stars curse Ben Solo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that I am metaphorically refusing to look all of you in the eye. (Also thank you for reading, this fic is so important to me!)


	4. Fallout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Previously on _Stellar Outcasts_ :**  
> -Rey comes home from another mission; she feels guilty for enjoying them. She likes feeling useful.  
> -Rey goes up to debrief the mission with Finn/Poe/Rose  
> -F/P/R are drinking to celebrate a treaty being signed.   
> -Rey sees Finn/Rose being soft and intimate with each other (non-sexually)  
> -Rey impulsively tells the three of them to fuck off and runs out of the room, v uncomfortable  
> -She crashes into the Ben, the wine glass she’s holding smashes in her hand, Ben takes her upstairs where a droid takes care of the glass/cuts  
> -Ben begins to understand the extent of Rey’s intimacy issues

In the dark of her own room, Rey was willing to admit that she’d felt… betrayed, when she’d seen Rose and Finn. It wasn’t logical… but it was. 

 

Because in that moment she hadn’t really been all that threatened by  _ them  _ (even though she had been surprised and more than a little weirded out). She’d been betrayed by her own damn self; her stupid soft heart lurching when she saw that- that kriffing joy on Finn’s face. 

 

Things like that didn’t happen to Rey. Softness like that  _ shouldn’t  _ happen to Rey. That… thatness, the safety and contentment and happiness, it blunted down the edges she’d honed into herself, slowly filing herself down into a tool with the primary directive of survival. 

 

Long ago Rey had learned that wanting things was stupid.

 

It didn’t stop her, of course she still wanted things. But eventually Rey learned to allow herself to only long for things with either a 100% chance of coming true, or 0%. There couldn’t be anything in the middle, because that yawning void of ‘maybe’ left too much room for hope. 

 

For instance: she could let herself want to sleep an hour later during the hottest part of the afternoon. When her body was so tired her bones ached, or when the sun was so hot that the sand seemed to go liquid, she would let herself sleep.  _ Just because she wanted to.  _ It was something costless, something she could control, and so wanting it was okay. 

 

On the other end of the spectrum, she wanted her parents to come back for her. She wanted a family. And she could allow herself that, because after a while she’d finally accepted that there was no chance of it happening. She wanted it, but because she already had her answer (‘no’) she could go on without it. 

 

But the stuff in the middle… it was dangerous to want more water. It was dangerous to want to live closer to town, or to hope for the traveling missionaries to come to town with their soft used clothes and vitamin pills. She couldn’t control those things. And hope hurt.  

 

When she pulled off the plastic glove from the night before in the shower, her hand was tacky but healed. Not even scars had been left behind. Rey showered, and listened to her holo read off her schedule, and made a face when it informed her that Councilman Solo wished to meet with her on sub-floor two. 

 

He better not want to talk. 

 

~~~

 

“What the hell, Solo?” Rey asked, watching him through the open doorway of the basement room. Everything was stone down here, dark and rough-hewn and cool, and the narrow overhead lights didn’t seem quite capable of  cutting through the gloom. It echoed, too- she’d had to listen to her own footfalls all the way down the stairs and through the narrow subterranean corridors. 

 

He was in his usual dark pants, but the tunic had been ditched for a simple short-sleeved shirt. His hair had been pulled back into a single knot at the back of his head, slightly off-center. Idly, Rey wondered how many people alive had seen Ben like this. 

 

“We need to train,” said Ben. “And this is the place where we’re the least likely to be in the way.” 

 

Good. He was all business this morning, and she was so fucking grateful she could kiss him. She didn’t want to think about last night, yet. Didn’t want to have to apologize. 

 

Rey noticed the saber hilt he held loosely in his hand. “Not much we can destroy down here, either,” she said, stepping over the threshold and pulling her own weapon from her belt. 

 

Rey could have asked him,  _ Why me?  _ Or  _ Why train?  _ But those would have been stupid, disingenuous questions. They both knew now that wars never really ended, and they both knew that only the other was really up to taking them on in a fight. It wasn’t hubris- it was just the way things were. 

 

The Force had picked them. They were vessels, and vessels need to be strong. 

 

“No sabers,” said Ben, setting his on the side of the room. 

 

There were a few long, hilted pieces of steel propped against one wall, and Rey scoffed at them. “Swords,” she asked. “What, are we playing at knighthood?”

 

Ben looked at the swords, then his saber, and then hers: the one that held the redeemed Skywalker crystal, bleached white in the reforging process. “Not playing,” he said. “The Jedi are gone, but the idea of knights… that’s far, far older.”

 

“Whatever,” said Rey, setting her saber to the side too, followed by the heavy canvas jacket she’d taken to wearing. The more pockets and hiding places, the merrier. 

 

“What fighting styles have you learned?” asked Ben, and she could  _ hear  _ the tone switch, his voice deepening and consonants crisping as he slid into instruction mode. 

 

Rey shrugged and studied a dark stain on the wall behind Kylo’s left shoulder. “Desperation,” she said, her voice false-casual.

 

It was true, deeply so: she’d learned to fight for meals and freedom and safety on Jakku. She’d learned to fight to stay alive in the skirmishes and war with the Resistance. Her only real education had come in the form of hand-to-hand combat with Poe and a little blaster and knife-play from Chewie. She’d been on her own. 

 

“I guess I’m lucky,” she said when Ben raised one heavy eyebrow. 

 

“Powerful,” Ben corrected. 

 

Rey shrugged again. “I know- more than I should,” she admitted. “The moves- especially the footwork. It feels really familiar. My body just knows it.”

 

Ben cocked his head, those dark eyes trained on her. “You could speak Wookie, couldn’t you?”

 

Rey nodded slowly. 

 

“We’re bonded,” said Ben, dragging the tip of his sword over the floor with a scritching noise. “It’s possible- it’s possible we’ve been bonded for a while. Or that you’ve been able to pick things up from me through the bond.”

 

“What do you mean?” asked Rey, shifting a little side to side. She didn’t like this; didn’t like the idea that the only thing she had that was useful or special had come from Ben. It didn’t feel right. 

 

“On Starkiller… you’d never influenced someone like that before, had you?”

 

Rey thought of how many nights she’d gone to bed hungry. “That was the first time,” she said with no small amount of regret. 

 

“How did you know how to do it?”

 

“I’d... I saw you do it,” she said, trying to remember. Had she?

 

“But you didn’t know what to feel for; you’d never been told  _ how,”  _ said Ben, his voice insistent. 

 

“You know I hadn’t!” said Rey, reaching the second sword in a few long strides. “Did you call me down to talk or to practice?”

 

Ben’s nostrils flared, and then one brow rose, just a little. Rey had a good guess as to what he was thinking. 

 

He sank back, sword up, both feet planted. “To practice,” he said. “Attack me.”

 

She didn’t need to be asked twice. She fell forward, wrist straight, and she  _ felt  _ herself flow down into the headspace she inhabited during a fight like this. Everything was movement and proximity and intent; she could tell where he was and where his sword was, she could feel the air move before he shifted, she could feel where she needed to be. He smacked his dulled blade against her clavicle eventually, but not before she’d made him work for it. 

 

“You move like you’ve been trained for this,” he said. 

 

Rey panted and backed away a few steps. She didn’t trust that he’d stay over there like  he should. “You know I couldn’t outfight you,” she said. She’d felt him drawing her out and checking her skills, but the ‘fight’ had felt so good she hadn’t cared. 

 

“But you don’t need to,” he said. “I’m... one of a kind.”

 

A year ago he’d have said something arrogant and grand but this- that simple statement ( _ I’m one of a kind _ ) was the undistilled truth. There wasn’t another Force user like Ben; there wasn’t someone who’d been trained for some kind of combat since childhood like Ben. 

 

“I’m better with the hand-to-hand stuff,” Rey admitted. “And- you know, lifting rocks.”

 

“Rocks?” asked Ben. 

 

“Yeah- or stuff.” She didn’t want to mention Luke’s name. Things weren’t  _ great,  _ but they were going well enough. No need to bring Luke into this. “You know, with the Force.”

 

“I saw an image of that ship you crushed,” said Ben dryly. “And I was there, on Naboo. Remember?”

 

Neither of them was likely to forget that last fight. Nobody who’d been there would: ships fell from the sky, ripped from the atmosphere like rain drops, and in the center of all the debris stood Rey and Ben, their feet sure on the trembling ground. 

 

He smiled a little, just the corner of his mouth twitching. “Lifting stuff. Yes, you’re good at that.”

 

“It’s just-” the words tumbled out, she’d never had someone she could talk about this stuff with. “I can  _ feel  _ everything when I need to. I know right where everything is, and it’s so easy to make that thing go over there.”

 

Ben nodded. “That’s not unusual. Most Force users had some natural talent and affinity.”

 

“What was yours?” asked Rey before she could stop herself. 

 

Still wearing that dry little smile Ben turned the wrist that was holding his practice sword. It was enough to make the metal glint in the weak light, looking far more dangerous in Ben’s hand than Rey’s looked in hers. 

 

“Ah,” she said quietly. 

 

“You’re more than proficient at this,” said Ben. “You don’t need to fight like me. You should practice, of course, but if you’d rather learn something more suited to you…?”

 

“Like what?” asked Rey, tempted. She’d always been curious, always wanted to know more. This all had started because she’d gone to check on a screaming droid. 

 

“Force blocking,” said Ben. “It seems like something that you’d do well.”

 

“How do I do it?”

 

Ben looked up at the dank ceiling, thinking. “You… feel the air, and the Force, and you push back at something with it like you would a physical shield. Here- try to stop this.”

 

Slowly and without any real strength Ben poked Rey in the belly with his sword. 

 

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said after the third failed attempt. 

 

“You- you could take the sword out of my hand. You could physically  _ move  _ the sword. This isn’t that, you’re just stopping it. You’re freezing the Force around it.” 

 

That made more sense. Rey nodded, and they resumed their practice.  _ Poke. Nothing. Poke. Nothing.  _

 

And then, finally, something. Rey could feel the sword sliding through the air around it, leaving little eddies in its wake, and she- she froze them, and held them, and the sword didn’t touch her belly. 

 

It was like trying to pin down the tide, and she could feel sweat prickling along her hairline when Ben’s arm flexed and his weight shifted; if she dropped it now the dull practice weapon might just manage to run her through, and with her teeth gritted she pushed back. 

 

Ben’s eyes widened, just for a moment, before she saw his boots inch back, scuffing lightly on the floor, and with her limbs trembling and temples throbbing Rey dropped her hold, rolled to the side, and let Ben stumble forward. 

 

“That’s- you’re one of three Force-users in history that can do that,” he said. 

 

The words seemed to seep into Rey’s tired brain slowly, and she could feel her limbs trembling against the cold floor of the basement room. “What-  _ what?”  _

 

“I thought you’d have an affinity for it,” said Ben. “But I didn’t expect-”

 

“You asked me to practice something you thought was impossible?” Rey asked. 

 

“It  _ isn’t  _ impossible,” said Ben, tossing away the practice sword and sitting down beside her. “I read about it in the histories. Two other Jedi were able to use Force shields.”

 

“Can you?” asked Rey. She decided she wouldn’t be angry with him for setting her an impossible challenge, because clearly it wasn’t actually impossible. And he’d been right, and if she argued she’d just have to listen to him say it. 

 

“Not really,” said Ben, swiveling a little from side to side, his long arms held out from his body. “Mostly I just grab things out of the air before they get to me, but that’s different. 

 

“Huh,” said Rey, listening as her own heart rate slowed. So there  _ was  _ something Ben Solo couldn’t do.

 

They stayed on the cool floor of the empty basement room for a while in companionable silence, stretching and listening to the subtle rattle of pipes and radiators overhead. It was really nice, Rey decided. It was pleasant to sit here with someone like herself. 

 

Of course, it was Ben that ruined it. 

 

“Have you apologized to Finn and Rose yet?” he asked, pushing himself up to his feet. 

 

“No,” said Rey, ignoring the pang of guilt that shot through her stomach. She rolled to her feet as well; probably she wanted to be upright for this. 

 

“You need to,” said Ben. 

 

He was talking to her like she was a child, and how  _ dare  _ he think she needed that? She’d been on her own long before he was. “Oh really?” she drawled. “Like you apologized for all the shit you pulled as Supreme Leader and Dark Side Tantrum Thrower?”

 

Ben rolled his eyes and tugged his overtunic back on. “Yeah,” he said, his voice muffled by the cloth. “I did. It felt stupid, but the therapist thought it would help. And it did.”

 

“Not just the, you know, official speech?” Rey asked, nearly staggering at the idea that Ben went to therapy. “Actual apologies?”

 

“Actual apologies,” he said, cinching his belt tight and checking the angle of his saber. 

 

“Fuck,” breathed Rey succinctly. 

 

“You could try it, you know,” said Ben. “There are a few of them around. I could look up the best ones, if you want.”

 

“No,” Rey snapped, glaring at him. 

 

Ben shrugged with one bold shoulder and moved to the door. “Fine,” he said. “But you need to figure out your shit, Rey. One way or another.”

 

~~~

 

She apologized during Finn and Rose’s lunch break. They shared an office suite, and she figured that if she timed her visit just right, someone would come in just behind her with something more important to do. It would be an excuse to leave without having to explain herself too long.

 

“I’m sorry about last night,” said Rey quietly, watching one of Finn’s aides leave the room with a holo open in front of her. 

 

“It’s okay,” he said, taking her hand. “It’s really okay, but what happened? I don’t - you know, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable with us.”

 

Rose, always the shrewdest of the bunch, was watching Rey through slightly narrowed eyes. Ostensibly Rey answered Finn’s question, but she directed her words at Rose. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m happy that you’re together, I really, really am. You deserve it. And more. I was just… surprised.”

 

Finn seems giddily relieved, pulling Rey into him for a tight hug, and while Rose still doesn’t say anything, she nods and shoots Rey a wink. 

 

For one blissful minute Rey lets herself lean totally into Finn’s body. He’s always been safe, always been open like this. He never… he never wanted anything from her, personally or on a grander scale. The only thing he’d ever really wanted was to laugh with her, and for both of them to be safe. It sounds simple, but it isn’t: it isn’t some case of Finn not having a bad side, or wanting things to be easy. He’s smart; it isn’t that. 

 

He just liked her. He was the first real friend she’d ever made; the person who she trusted implicitly not to have any sneakier motivations whatsoever. Rey loved him, and she was sorry for making him worry. 

 

The office door cracked open, and Rey pulled away from Finn. “There’s a coalition here from the Permian System,” said the aide, sticking her head in the room but not walking all the way through the door. “Will you see them?”

 

Rose sighed and took her place at the desk. “Send them in,” she said. 

 

Rey clapped Finn on the shoulder and smiled at him. “Alright, Your Eminence,” she said. “Kick some bureaucratic ass.”

 

“Will do,” he said, smiling back. 

 

Heart lighter, Rey wandered out of the busting public part of the capitol and into the slower, dimmer offices. Accounting and permitting and record keeping had to happen somewhere, and it wasn’t nearly as glamorous, but it was a hell of a lot quieter. 

 

There was a little sitting area at the far end of the hall, marked by plasticy chairs and a large potted fern. It’s sad, but there’s nobody around, and based on how cool the corner is she doubts anyone is going to come by. 

 

It’s as good a place to think as any: impersonal, quiet, tucked out of the way. The fern offers a little bit of cover, and a shard of pale quartz rests in the center of the low table. It’s an interesting focal point for the nook. 

 

Probably she could try therapy. She wouldn’t ask Ben about it, either. Maybe a droid. Artoo would keep her secret, and he’d list out the places around the capitol building. Even just talking through… everything, even if the therapist didn’t have anything smart to say. Just the talking might feel good, because Rey knows she isn’t delusional. A little paranoid, wary, traumatized sure. She knows all that now. But she isn’t  _ crazy.  _ Her… she’ll call them quirks. Her quirks are hers, and they’ve been accumulated and ingrained through a lifetime of positive reinforcement: when one variable increased (suspicion) so did the other (survival). 

 

She’s completely sane. Just broken. And now it’s starting to affect her everyday life. Isn’t that one of the signs of an addict? When it impedes job function? 

 

She was still looking at the pink crystal, still trying to decide what she needed to do. Apologize to Poe, probably. And then- well. She’ll experiment. 

 

~~~

 

Her first experiment takes place in the dining hall. It’s massive, on the first basement of the capitol building, and open to all of the capitol employees and former Resistance members. It sometimes still feels like a miracle, just like her shower. She hadn’t known there was this much real food in the ‘verse. 

 

The first part of the cafeteria experiment was this: eat with Silvia. Rey usually ate by herself under the window, plugging little speaker things into her ears and listening to something on her holo. It was a way to feel marginally less behind everyone who could read the news on their own. 

 

Today, however, she found Silvia sitting with a few other woman, and cautiously approached the table. 

 

“Sit here,” called Silvia, patting the bench next to her. 

 

Across the round table a short, curvy woman was telling a story, gesturing wildly with her spoon. Rey missed whatever the punchline was, but the other women laughed. 

 

“Good to see you, Rey!” said the laughing, spoon-wielding woman. I’m Brex. That’s Jasha, and she’s Sara.”

 

Rey nodded around, smiling over her sandwich. “Nice to meet you.”

 

“What have you been up to since the Accords?” asked Jasha. 

 

“Flying with this one, mostly,” said Rey, bumping her shoulder against Silvia’s and taking a bite of food. “She’s the best.”

 

“Yeah she is,” Jasha nodded. “We’ve missed her.”

 

“Are you all pilots?” Rey asked, remembering to swallow her food first. 

 

They weren’t, and it was fascinating. Jasha worked for the intergalactic bank, Sara worked up in the med bay, and Brex was an engineer that wrote flycodes for the reconfigured fleet. 

 

“Okay, so-” said Rey, knowing she was already way over her usual forty-minute lunch slot. “How the heck did you all meet?”

 

They looked guiltily at one another. Silvia finally rolled her eyes, sighed, and admitted, “There’s this… galactic dating show.”

 

“What?”

 

“A dating show. Someone is single, and they go on this show with other single people. There’s what, one from every system, right? So it’s basically sixty single people in a luxury resort on a core planet and we get to watch them kiss and fight and fall in love. Over the span of  _ two years. _ ”

 

“And we were all obsessed with it, and posting about the last season on the net, and… it turned out that this little subsection of us were already stationed on Chandrila. So we met up.”

 

“But we were fighting last year,” said Rey. “I mean, we were fighting until basically right now.”

 

Brex didn’t seem to realize what Rey was implying. She shrugged and said, “It’s not like people stopped needing entertainment.”

 

_ Entertainment. They’d been hopping from planet to planet, stealing medical supplies and hotracking the few available bunks in the Falcon and fighting to throw off a genocidal regime, and people had been watching kriffing  _ dating shows. 

 

“I have to go,” she said abruptly, standing so fast the bench rocked. She shoved her tray into the dirty bin and stalked out of the hall quickly, ignoring the people who glanced her way. 

 

And that was how she ended up performing the second half of her dining hall experiment: she didn’t take anything with her. Every day she took something (usually a piece of fruit) and hid it in her sock drawer. It made her feel better, knowing it was there, because a scavenger’s instincts died hard. She ate it- it wasn’t a waste- but she liked knowing there was food actually  _ in her possession. _

 

But she wasn’t crazy, so she didn’t go back to get any.

 

~~~

 

Rey goes to Ben that night, mostly because if she  _ didn’t  _ it would be another, even stranger break in her routine. 

 

“How was it?” he asked. He’s sitting at his tiny tabletop today, and is still fully dressed. Rey makes a face at him and drops into the opposite seat. 

 

“Fine,” she said, finding his calf with her foot and rubbing the toe of her boot up it. 

 

“I’d like to hear about it,” said Ben, shifting away. 

 

“Why? Just because you witnessed the- the inciting incident doesn’t mean you get all the dirty details.”

 

“I care about you,” he said. “We’re kind of- partners.”

 

Before Rey could suck in enough air to yell at him, Ben added, “It’s a weird word, but- I mean, we were literally paired together by the Force. We work together, we fuck together.”

 

Rey let out her breath on a  _ whoosh  _ of hot air. “Yeah, okay. You’re right.” She looked around his little apartment space, always clean and tidy and nearly as sterile as her own. “Ah- Finn was good, and Rose seemed to accept my apology. Poe just waved me away.”

 

She drummed her fingers on the tabletop, wishing they could get down to sex already, because oh god does she need the stress relief after the last couple days. 

 

“I had lunch with Silvia and her friends. They’re nice.”

 

“Your tone says otherwise,” said Ben, his eyes intent on her face. It’s something she’s learned to like about him, now. (Now that that intensity isn’t being used to exploit the tactical weaknesses of her and her friends.) She never feels like he’s forcing himself to follow her conversations. He really listens. 

 

“They…” If anyone would understand, it’s him. “Ben, they were watching some kind of romance show,” she said, tone bewildered. “We- you know, the last couple years we were fighting for everything. For everyone, including them. And it’s like… the war was this secondary thing that happened to most people. A kind of- I don’t know. Like a story, or a minor inconvenience.” 

 

“Isn’t that what we want, though?” asked Ben. “A chance for normal people to be normal people?”

 

“Yes…” said Rey, slowly. “I guess- I always thought of it in terms of the future. Kids won’t have to grow up in the same world we did. It felt so… big. And I guess it really wasn’t.”

 

“It was,” said Ben. “But not for everybody. A lot of the people on the inner planets weren’t affected at all. But for people on places like Jakku, it will change everything.”

 

Rey felt tired, all at once. Heavy limbs, aching head, burning eyes. “I guess,” she said. “I think I offended them too. The ladies.”

 

“Did you tell them to fuck off too?” asked Ben, his voice dry. 

 

Rey was tempted to put her head down on the table. “No, but I walked away practically mid-conversation.”

 

“Well, I call that improvement,” said Ben, and for a second he sounded so much like his father that Rey blinked at him, her mouth slightly open. 

 

“Right,” she finally drawled. “Are we going to fuck or not, Solo?”

 

His eyes narrowed. “No,” he said after an assessing pause. 

 

“No?” What did he mean ‘no’? Why was she here if not for that. 

 

“I want you to talk to someone. Someone who isn’t me.”

 

Rey played deliberately obtuse. “I talk to lots of people.”

 

“See a therapist,” said Ben, folding his arms and leaning back in his chair. 

 

“You can’t make me,” said Rey, still a little shocked. “And I can’t believe- you’re trying to bribe me into it with sex. Really Solo? You think your dick is  _ that  _ fine?”

 

He doesn’t rise to her fucking bait and she thinks she might hate him for it. With his dark eyes still locked on hers (and suddenly she’s reminded of that vine-twined black pool in Ach-To, the one she’d fallen into so willingly) Ben tells her, “I’ll still give you orgasms. I’m not going to… I don’t know, cut you off from me, or try to force your hand. I’m trying to be better, too. And that’s why I don’t want to have sex with someone who’s as in denial about their own problems as you are.”

 

It’s the most painful thing she’s felt in her life. More painful than breaking her arm falling in a wreck, more painful than the cuts she’d gotten in fights, more painful than being woken by hunger. 

 

She’d let herself need this. And it was being taken away. 

 

What the fuck was she supposed to  _ do  _ about it anyway? Yeah, talking it out was great and all, but that wasn’t going to change the past, and she couldn’t control the future either. And Ben- he was one to kriffing talk-

 

“Rey, breathe okay,  _ stars-”  _

 

His big hand was on the back of her neck, forcing her face down to her knees, neatly folding her in half in his kitchen fucking chair. 

 

“C’mon. In and out. In and out. Just breathe, Rey.”

 

Rey stayed there, looking at the dusty, wooden floor of Ben’s apartment, trying to sort out what had just happened. More specifically, she was trying to determine  _ why  _ she’d just had a panic attack at the idea of not getting sex. She’d been without sex for years. It shouldn’t bother her now. 

 

When her head stopped swimming she choked out, “You know. I had you pegged as useless in an emergency.”

 

“Most of the time I  _ was  _ the emergency,” said Ben. “Can’t go getting useless then.”

 

Stars take him. Why did he have to have a sense of humor? 

 

“Want to sit on the bed?” he asked. 

 

“I can go back to my room,” said Rey, still down around her knees. “Since the bed isn’t going to be used  _ properly _ .”

 

“I’ll take that as a yes,” said Ben, and scooped her up out of the chair. 

 

According to Finn, Ben had carried her draped across his chest like this at least once before. Now Rey  _ really  _ wished she could remember it, because the few steps from the table to the bed hadn’t been enough for her to properly enjoy the sensation. 

 

Ben sat them down on the bed easily, still holding her draped across his lap. Rey squirmed, ready to get up and leave, but Ben held her to him with both arms. “You aren’t going to die if you touch someone for more than ten seconds,” he told her sternly. 

 

No. But she’d only want more and more of it, an ever-increasing need that would kill her just as easily as the back-house painkillers for sale on Jakku. Then again- she’d already embarrassed herself enough for a lifetime, let alone one night. 

 

So Rey didn’t say anything, and she didn’t move. She sat tucked under Ben’s chin, her muscles loose, and her ear listening to the steady rhythm of his pulse. This was easily the best she’d felt in years. Warm, and safe, and content. 

 

When she’d judged that about fifteen minutes had passed she pushed at Ben’s arms and he let her up. 

 

“I’ll find someone to talk to tomorrow,” she said as she moved to the door. (It was a happy coincidence that he couldn’t see her face.) “And not for  _ you.  _ Mostly because if I ~~(have a panic attack)~~ can’t breathe on a mission, we all die.”

 

“True enough,” said Ben. “And good night, Rey.”

 

Her name on his lips felt like one last caress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi loves! I've been prepping for/traveling to/away at a work conference for the last week, and I want to apologize for not replying to comments yet. This is obviously a particularly personal story for me, and I hope you all know that every shout out and comment and sign of support is truly, deeply appreciated. Thank you for letting me share my art with you like this. I love you all, and hope you're having a wonderful week <3 
> 
> As always, I'm @caseydoesfandom on twitter if you'd like to hang out!


	5. Context

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Previously on _Stellar Outcasts_ :**  
> -Rey contemplates what is/isn’t safe to want.  
> -She trains with Ben; they learn she can Force Shield. He encourages her to apologize to F/P/R  
> -Rey apologized to Finn and Rose, and then Poe  
> -Rey tried something new: she has lunch with Silvia (her usual pilot) and Silvia’s friends (all women)  
> -While eating with the ladies she learns that they spent the last two years obsessing over a dating show  
> -Rey can’t make sense of how the war was *everything* to her, but life went on like normal for other people, so she walks out on the conversation  
> -She goes to Ben, who forces her to talk to him. Rey tells Ben about lunch. Ben tells her that he doesn’t want to have sex with someone who is in as much denial as Rey, because it will set back his own self-improvement  
> -Rey has a panic attack and admits that, yeah okay, probably she could talk to someone

After Artoo set Rey up with a 1300 appointment, Rey had spent the morning agonizing over what exactly to tell the doctor. She’d worried it like a wound, picking at the mental scab so it wouldn’t stop bleeding, and by the time she actually made it to the office (after intentionally taking alleys and back roads) she was an anxious mess. 

 

That was probably why, after both she and the therapist sat down, she blurted out, “I don’t care what people say to me most of the time, but when people are too nice it freaks me out.”

 

She’d already described her last few days on the intake form, carefully dictating everything to Artoo. She’d even taken an extra level of caution by meeting the droid inside a stripped-down shuttle inside the empty, early-morning hangar. The doctor should have at least  _ some  _ background on why she was blurting out her secrets now.

 

“Thank you for telling me,” said Dr. Kimura. “Rey- you and I are in a unique situation.”

 

What a nice way of putting it. 

 

Dr. Kimura continued, “Because of how integral you were in the defeat of the First Order, there have been dozens of stories written about your origins and training. Usually, when I first meet a patient, I let them choose what to tell me… but that isn’t an option for you.”

 

It was actually a huge relief to have that acknowledged. For the past few months Rey had been living in a massive building full of people who all knew her name, while she knew almost none of theirs. She nodded to the doctor. “But you know everything.”

 

“Not everything,” said Dr. Kimura, crossing her legs. She was very tall and delicately thin, her neck lithe enough that Rey might worry about it snapping if the doc turned too quickly. All that aside, it was hard to look away from her tawny orange eyes. 

 

“I thought that maybe you’d like to give me some context for what I’ve already heard. If you don’t, we can certainly move on to the issues you described on your initial forms.”

 

“Context… would help, wouldn’t it?”

 

“Absolutely,” said Dr. Kimura. 

 

Rey figured it would be easiest to start at the beginning. “When I was four- well, we think I was four- I was sold to a scrap trader by my boozer parents…” 

 

~~~

 

That night, Ben came to her. 

 

She’d left her front door unlocked (because honestly who was going to break into the Capital and  _ then  _ decide to fuck with her room, of all of them), so he was able to pad in on nearly silent feet. 

 

“What?” Rey asked, her voice muffled by the pillow pressed over her face.

 

“You didn’t show up to dinner, so I assumed you were either dead or dying,” said Ben. Something clicked down on her tabletop, and Rey deduced it was a tray of something warm and spicy, judging by the smell. 

 

“You brought my corpse food?” asked Rey, still keeping the pillow in place. 

 

“I was being hopeful,” said Ben, and then the cushion was yanked off her face. 

 

She blinked, vision fuzzy from being blocked for so long. Ben was looming over her, his hair in his face, and Rey thought that probably this was what more than a few people had seen before becoming starstuff again. 

 

“Dinner,” said Ben. “Get up.”

 

Rey hauled herself up and shuffled over to the table where a steaming bowl was waiting for her. “Thanks,” she mumbled, spooning up a mouthful of rice and tomato and seafood. 

 

“Yeah,” said Ben, taking her spot on the rumpled bed. “What happened, anyway?”

 

“I went to- talk to someone,” she said, turning a little so that she could only see Ben from the corner of her eye. “And she gave me a double slot, to start. It was weird and gave me a headache and there’s part of me that’s still waiting for everything I said to end up on the web. Everywhere. In the whole galaxy.”

 

“That won’t happen,” said Ben, in a tone that implied that if it  _ did  _ happen, he’d be happy to revisit his no-razing-the-galaxy policy.

 

“We’ll see,” said Rey, talking around another mouthful of food. “After I got home I was just... freaky tired considering I sat in a comfy chair all afternoon.”

 

“And the pillow?”

 

Rey shrugged and chewed. “If I had more, they’d have been on top of me as well. It helped the headache.”

 

Ben made a little rumbling noise in his chest, like he was considering saying something but not sure if he should. 

 

“What?” Rey asked flatly. 

 

“I-” He looked up at the ceiling, then braced his elbows on his knees, leaned forward, and looked at her. “I’m really proud of you. And probably I’m fucking everything up by telling you that, but I am.”

 

Rey remembered what she’d told Dr. Kimura earlier:  _ I don’t care what people say to me most of the time, but when people are too nice it freaks me out.  _ And it did. It freaked her the fuck out, and Ben’s praise felt unearned, and her instinct was to turn this back on him. She could ask, “Oh, yeah? Low fucking bar, Solo.” She  _ could  _ say that. But she shouldn’t. 

 

She settled for a shrug. 

 

He let her finish her food, and brush her teeth, and then she sat down next to him on the bed, quietly watching the red-gold shadows of an autumn evening crawling across the floor. 

 

“I don’t- really want to talk about it with you,” she said finally. 

 

“That’s okay,” said Ben. “I don’t want to talk about my therapy with you.”

 

Rey nodded. Fair enough. She didn’t know if she was ready to hear about it, anyway. 

 

“Are you- you’re going back?” Ben asked.  _ Fuck  _ that hope from him. 

 

“Yeah,” said Rey. “I’m going back.”

 

In the half-light of Rey’s beside lamp Ben’s skin seemed to glow, pale and luminous, contrasted by the inky-shadow spill of his hair. She wasn’t sure how to ask if she was allowed to have sex with him or not. He’d always just kind of… initiated, before. (Before he’d refused her, which. You know.  _ Had  _ been the right call.)

 

Ben solved the problem by picking up Rey and plonking her down in his lap. It was one of the many things she appreciated about him, so she told him: “I like it when you do that.”

 

“Do what?” asked Ben, stroking one hand up and down her back and resting the other, flat and still, over her belly. 

 

“Just- move me around, wherever, like it isn’t even an issue for you,” she said. “It’s- I like it.”

 

“Oh yeah?” asked Ben, his mouth curling into a smirk. “Good to know.” He kept his hand on her back, but bent to kiss her, craning her neck and pushing her far enough off balance that she had to let him catch her weight in his hand. His mouth was warm and gentle and thorough, and when he finally released her bottom lip from between his teeth Rey could feel hear breath coming faster than it had been before. 

 

“You aren’t wearing the breast band,” said Ben, returning to stroking the smooth plane of her back. 

 

“Who takes a nap in one of those things?” said Rey scornfully. 

 

“Fair point,” said Ben, and he bent to kiss her again. 

 

Sometimes he got like this: he seemed to have these moods where all he wanted to do was kiss her, and stroke her, and hold his face to hers and breathe her air until she was an impatient, quivering, boneless streak of  _ need  _ beneath him. She’d always goaded him out of it before, biting at his lips or his neck, yanking at his clothes, but right now her body was sleep-loose and her mind was a jumble and it felt good to go with the flow of Ben’s roving kisses. 

 

“You want this?” Ben asked, his clever fingers pushing her panties to the side and lightly swiping over her clit. 

 

“What do you think?” asked Rey, digging her nails into the skin of his shoulder. 

 

“I think you’d throw me over for chocolate custard in a heartbeat,” said Ben, still toying with Rey’s clit. 

 

“Did you bring custard?” asked Rey, her voice just a little higher than normal. 

 

“No,” said Ben, leaning in to lightly bite at Rey’s collarbone. 

 

“Well, I can settle,” said Rey, and then gasped when Ben flicked her clit in punishment. He kept her off-balance, tilted back over his arm, making her use her abs and faith in him to keep from falling. His fingers worked inside and his mouth sucked bruises over the freckled curve of one shoulder, and time (as it always did with him, like this) slowed.

 

“How do you want this?” Ben asked when his fingers were nearly frictionless in the slick between Rey’s legs. “Mouths? In my lap?”

 

Both of those sounded delicious, but Rey gasped, “On my belly again. If you want?”

 

He grabbed her waist, twisted, and her facedown on the pillows in seconds.  _ Yeah,  _ Rey thought as Ben stripped her panties down her legs.  _ She liked it when he did that. _

 

“Ohmygod,” she babbled, digging her fingers into the comforter as Ben slowly worked his way inside her. “Ben, oh my god it’s so good Ben, please-”

 

When he kissed the spot between her shoulder blades he let his teeth scrape over the jut of bone and Rey gave a full body shiver, sliding Ben that last little bit home. 

 

“Okay,” he said into her ear, his voice raspy already. “We can do it like this today, but we have to ration it. It’s too powerful.”

 

“Holidays,” said Rey as Ben slowly withdrew before rocking into her again, working so forcefully that Rey’s back arched as her hips dug into the mattress. 

 

“Birthdays,” said Ben, and now Rey could feel the muscles in his thighs flexing into hers. She’d picked this position because last time it had been slower, more deliberate, and she’d been able to luxuriate. The pressure rubbed him against her in all the right places inside, she was able to get a hand on her clit, and he could thrust into her so hard her toes curled, pushing her to that threshold of  _ pleasureplain  _ before sliding back out again. 

 

“Solstices,” said Rey. “Full moons.”

 

“For what planet?” asked Ben, sliding his hand around to her throat. He didn’t squeeze; she didn’t think his fingertips were even in contact with her skin. He just cupped her there, forcing her to hold her head arched back, and she felt herself go absolutely liquid around him. 

 

“Anywhere,” she told him, bucking against him and working her clit roughly. “Anywhere.” She came on her fingers and his cock, her hips grinding deep into the mattress and her back arching against Ben. 

 

“ _ Kriff,”  _ he muttered, circling hard against her. “Stars, Rey, look at you.”

 

He started thrusting harder, his moves rocking her bed, and before Rey could start to get sore he was coming too, grinding and twisting against her. 

 

“Alright,” said Rey, her voice muffled by the pillow. “You might be right. This position is too powerful.”

 

Ben dropped a kiss onto her shoulder. “That’s all you, kid. It’s all you.

 

~~~

 

She trained with Ben, she got some amount of sleep, and she went back to the therapist on Thursday. The conversation ended like this: 

 

“You aren’t afraid to make deep connections with a few people. Finn and Ben, it sounds like, but also Poe and Rose.”

 

“Right,” said Rey. She’d already learned that if she volunteered less information, the other woman was more likely to talk. 

 

“But you haven’t been doing normal things with them.”

 

“I have dinner with them almost every night!” said Rey. 

 

“That’s survival,” said Dr. Kimura, unflappable. “Do something normal, with them or with another friend. Download a holovid, go to the park, visit a museum.”

 

“You realize that for me, normal would be sitting in a sandpile by myself while waiting to thirst to death,” said Rey, crossing her arms. “Normal is relative.”

 

Those deep orange eyes flicked up to the ceiling, and Rey was perversely pleased to have annoyed the premier trauma therapist of Hanna City. 

 

“Normal for the life you  _ want  _ to live, Rey,” said the therapist. “If you want your future to be alone in the dunes, try that. If you want your new normal to be among people, go out with people.”

 

Okay, so that round definitely went to Dr. Kimura. 

 

~~~

 

Rey, Silvia, the ladies, and BB8 ended up at an interplanetary bar down by the public port. BB8 had a flower barrette clipped to his antenna. 

 

“Hey!” Rey greeted the woman, surprised that she didn’t stiffen when they all took turns hugging her. 

 

BB8 whistled before Rey had a chance to slide back into the booth. “Yes, hello to you too,” she told him. “What are you doing here? And yes, I do like the flower. I  _ do.  _ Pink looks nice with the orange.”

 

“Did that droid just tell you he was on security detail?” asked Brex. 

 

“Yep,” said Rey. “And trust me, I believe him.”

 

BB chirped, a hatch opened, and his tiny flamethrower popped out.

 

The women blinked down at him. “Well,” said Sara, her voice a little high. “We won’t have to wait for drinks.” (They didn’t.)

 

Things were a little weird at first. Rey was the newcomer to the group, so she didn’t have context for a lot of the introductory, catching-up stuff. Jasha had two kids at home, and her mom was taking care of them for the night. Sara was dating some guy and she was currently making fun of him for ...something. Based on the hand activity under the table, Brex and Silvia were in some sort of flirtation, but Rey didn’t know if it was public, or even if the other two women had noticed. 

 

It was just… a lot. 

 

Things were better after the first round of Hosnian Sunrises. 

 

“All right girls,” said Sara as BB rolled away to get the next round. “Never Have I Ever.”

 

Silvia groaned. “I always lose in the first round,” she said. “And have a horrible hangover the next day.”

 

“That’s because you’re a hot, bisexual pilot who has traveled the galaxy. You’ve done everything,” said Sara ruthlessly. “And we need to get to know Rey.”

 

BB rolled back over, whistling happily, the tray carefully balanced on his little cranial dome. “Thank you,” said Rey, lifting it off him. 

 

“Truth serum!” said Jasaha. “Drink up, ladies.”

 

“I’ll go first,” said Sara. “Never have I ever… played Galaxy Band.”

 

Silvia, Brex, and Jasha held up a finger and took a sip of their drinks. 

 

“What’s Galaxy Band?” asked Rey. 

 

“It’s… you’re put into a holo reality and it makes you a pretend rockstar,” said Brex succinctly. “It was the absolute  _ shit  _ when it came out- what, eight, nine years ago?”

 

“Yeah,” said Jasha gloomily. “I dated a guy who’d play that in his socks. Just the socks.”

 

“Tits forever,” muttered Brex. 

 

“Your turn,” said Sara to Jasha. 

 

She puffed out a sigh and coiled one dark braid around her finger. “Never have I ever… been blackout, memory-loss drunk.”

 

Everyone but Rey took a drink and held up another finger. “That changes tonight,” said Sara. 

 

Brex sent BB off for waters. 

 

It was Rey’s turn now, and she drummed her fingers on the table. She could use pretty much anything, but she didn’t want it to be too sad. “Never have I ever been swimming,” she announced. 

 

The women grumbled. The women took a drink. Rey won two rounds of ‘Never Have I Ever’, but finished her slightly watery drink anyway. 

 

“Alright,” said Silvia. “Two Truths and a Lie.”

 

Brex looked solemnly into the layered liquors of her third drink. “I thought I’d left this behind when I graduated and went to engineering school.”

 

“You can never escape drinking games,” said Silvia, her face mock-serious, but under the table Rey watched as she tickled the inside of Brex’s knee. “Not ever. We’ll be playing them in the retirement home for used-up soldiers.”

 

Rey started to think, “So normal people  _ do  _ plan for old age,” but tamped it down quick. She was having too much fun for that kind of thought. 

 

“I’ll go first this time,” said Silvia, twiddling her straw. “Ah- okay. I once got caught having sex in the cockpit of my cruiser, I once shot my commanding officer in the foot, and there’s a drink named after me on Hymoon.”

 

“You-” started Brex, but Silvia clapped her hand over the redhead’s mouth without even looking. It startled a laugh of Rey: they were clearly involved, but it was all- well, laughter and affection and smiles. It was different from Finn and Rose and Poe, but the same. It made Rey grin. 

 

“You can answer after the others guess,” said Silvia easily. Brex rolled her eyes and wiggled her eyebrows, Silvia’s hand still clamped over her mouth. 

 

“Shot your commanding officer,” said Sara. 

 

“No, bitch you don’t have a drink named after you,” said Jasha. 

 

Rey sized Silvia up. “It’s the sex in the cockpit,” she said. “I’ve seen you doing your flight checks. You wouldn’t let risk someone knocking into something important.”

 

Silvia smirked and took her hand from Brex’s mouth. Brex grabbed Silvia’s wrist and smacked a kiss on her palm. “Want me to answer that?” she asked.  

 

“Sure,” said Silvia. Rey wondered if she consciously wrapped her fingers around the spot where Brex had kissed her. 

 

“Well I’ve drunk a Silvia Jinsen, and I’ve heard the story about you tasing your colonel. That just leaves the sex, sweetheart.”

 

“Yep,” said Silvia. “You were right, Rey.”

 

“First off, I don’t like how the newbie is winning,” said Sara. “And secondly, since when is this-” she flapped her hand between Silvia and Brex- “A thing?”

 

“Oh, it’s  _ been  _ a thing,” said Brex. “You’re just now noticing it.”

 

“And I don’t have any life experience because I was abandoned on a desert planet as a child,” said Rey, saccharine sweet. 

 

With any other group she would have been met by shifty eyes and a tense silence. Instead, Jasha leaned over to bump her shoulder against Rey’s. “Just hang with us, babe,” she said. “We’ll knock the innocence out of you in no time.”

 

A slow grin spread over Rey’s face, a hone- warm drizzle of mischief. “Who said I was innocent?” she asked. 

 

“Oooh,” went Jasha, and Silvia cheered. 

 

“I’ll drink to that!” she said. 

 

They drank. Even slightly warm, the drinks were going down easy. 

 

“Alright, it only took-” Sara checked her holo. “An hour and ten minutes for us to get to sex. That means it’s  _ all  _ on the table.”

 

“Uh-huh,” said Jasha. “Let’s hear it, princess.”

 

“Princess?  _ Princess _ ?” asked Sara, all mock-hurt. “Just you wait.” She flicked through her holo and then passed the screen to Jasha. Rey leaned over her shoulder to see, too. 

 

“Damn,” said Jasha. It was a picture of a half-naked man, slightly washed out from the lights in what was clearly his ‘fresher. His toilet was in the background.

 

“Look at those  _ abs,”  _ sighed Jasha. “I need to date again.”

 

“His towel is gross,” Rey commented. 

 

Jasha whipped her head around. “Are you kidding? How was his  _ towel  _ what you noticed in that picture?”

 

Rey felt the alcohol sliding through her like sunrise, like hope, like belonging. “Well,” she said coyly. “Ben has pretty good muscles too. At some point, you know, it’s- just a body.” 

 

Brex coughed, and Silvia smacked her on the back. 

 

“So it’s true- you’re really sleeping with Kylo- I mean- Supreme- Ben Solo?”

 

All four of them looked at her expectantly. “Yes?” Rey answered. She just  _ knew  _ they were going to walk away now, wondering how she let that monster of a man touch her-

 

“Well??” asked Sara. “How is it?”

 

“He’s so  _ big,”  _ breathed Jasha. 

 

“I know,” said Rey, smug, wiggling her eyebrows exaggeratedly. 

 

“Size doesn’t matter,” Brex muttered.

 

“Says the lesbian with the eight-inch strap-on,” Silvia added. 

 

This time it was Sara’s turn to choke. “That feels… ambitious,” she said. 

 

“Well, sometimes lesbians need a good dicking too,” said Brex, primly. 

 

“Ladies,” said Jasha. “We’re getting distracted. Rey owes us some  _ answers.” _

 

“True,” said Silvia, turning on Rey. “So. What’s it like. Does he go down on you? Does he make you go down on him?”

 

“Ah-”

 

“You don’t actually have to answer this stuff,” said Brex, cutting in. “And we won’t care if do or don’t, but we’re over the three-drink-mouth-filter limit, so. You know.”

 

Rey didn’t know, but she liked that Brex had thought to tell her that. “Yeah, he goes down on me. That’s new. My former, ah. Friend didn’t do that.”

 

“Then he wasn’t your friend. Or she. Whatever. Not friends,” said Jasha. “I need someone who does that.”

 

“It’s  _ really good,”  _ said Rey. “I swear he doesn’t need to breathe.”

 

The lesbian looked thoughtful, but the rest of the women sighed. 

 

“And he tastes good,” said Rey. “He washes up when he knows I’m visiting.”

 

“Thoughtful,” said Sara. 

 

“Who’d have suspected it of the former Supreme Leader?”

 

“Probably he’s a big picture thinker.”

 

“He’s a big something,” Jasha muttered. 

 

“He can make you come, right?” asked Silvia, like that was the important thing. Upon further consideration, Rey decided that it was  _ an  _ important thing. 

 

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “Oh yeah. I have to hold off sometimes because he’s shooting for three, but I still have to walk back to my room, you know?”

 

Silvia and Brex nodded. Sara and Jasha looked a little awed. 

 

“Enough about me,” said Rey, watching BB roll away. There was a zap and a shriek from the bar area, and then he was back. This time with shots. “I want to know about the two of you,” she said as Silvia passed Rey the little glass. 

 

“Hmm?” Silvia asked innocently, clinking her drink to Rey’s. “To luck!” she yelled, and then downed the liquor. 

 

Rey had had the cheap, illegally distilled stuff from the scrap-cleaning hut in Niima. If she could drink that she could survive anything, but  _ stars,  _ whatever BB had brought them tasted like the smell of gasoline. 

 

“You guys,” Rey wheezed. “When you’d start going out?”

 

“Mostly we stay in,” said Brex with a leer, and then pulled Silvia down into a kiss. 

 

“Right after the Accords,” said Silvia, coming up for air. Rey wondered why their affection wasn’t bothering her. Couldn’t be the therapy, she’d only had two sessions. She wondered what Ben was doing. She wondered how they were getting home. 

 

“Those first nights- we were all celebrating pretty hard,” said Silvia. 

 

Rey nodded. She remembered. 

 

“I let the kids stay up,” said Jasha. “We went up on the roof of our building and watched the fireworks.”

 

“The rest of us had orgasms,” said Sara. 

 

“Is girl’s night… always like this?” Rey asked. “This… sexy?”

 

“Yeah,” said Silvia. “We have healthy libidos and kind of a bragging kink, but if it bothers you we can definitely stop.”

 

“No it’s not- I just haven’t done it,” said Rey. 

 

“We’re not still playing ‘Never Have I Ever’ are we?” Sara asked. “Because with her around, we could drink ourselves to death in like, an hour.”

 

“Apparently not if we play it the dirty way,” said Jasha, a gleam in her brown eyes. 

 

“You know people can hear us, right?” asked Brex. 

 

“Yep,” said Silvia. 

 

“And watch you. Those guys playing dejarik were pretty focused on your kiss,” said Rey, nodding to two uniformed guy on the other side of the dark floor. 

 

“Used to it,” said Brex. “We’re hot.”

 

That was true. 

 

“C’mon,” said Sara. “One more round, then we call a ‘port and go home.”

 

“Someone’s coming to get us?”

 

“Yep,” said Sara. “I put in a request earlier, so someone from the Capitol will come pick us when we comm.”

 

“Smart,” said Rey, feeling her lips going a little numb. That only happened when she was  _ really  _ out of it. She was going to be so hungover tomorrow: probably she should tell Ben tonight that she couldn’t make it to training. That way he could sleep in. 

 

They played another round of the lying game, BB8 forced them all to drink water, and Rey leaned under the table to look at him. “I saved you,” she whispered to him, making two attempts to properly enunciate ‘saved’. “You owe me. So this whole night better be off the record, okay?”

 

BB whirred angrily. 

 

“Look, I know you’re a good secret keeper,” said Rey, nodding, enjoying the way her hair bounced. “I’m just letting you know. I’ll know who the snitch is. No, it  _ won’t  _ be Sara. Okay maybe it’ll be Sara. I’m sorry I impugned your honor, BB.”

 

Placated, BB8 rolled out of the booth, stood guard as the women gathered their bags and water bottles, and then cleared them a path to the door, his little lighter sparking threateningly. 

 

On their way to the front the two men from before wandered across the floor. “Looks like you could use a ride,” said one. 

 

“And some company,” said the other, grinning with yellowed teeth. 

 

“Nope,” said Rey, bringing up the rear, glad that she was the tallest of the group and still in her boots. 

 

“Oh, c’mon,” said the first guy, lunging. 

 

It was satisfying to hear the thud when he smacked into the far wall, easily force- thrown. 

 

“Not tonight,” she said firmly. “We’re good.”

 

Half the bar was watching Rey, so she went with whatever imp of mischief had sparked this idea in the first place: she blew them a kiss, gave the bar a mocking salute, and sauntered out. 

 

“I love you,” said Jasha, tugging Rey in for a hug. “Will you come out with us always and forever?”

 

“We could go  _ dancing,”  _ said Sara.

 

“Really? That’s what you’ve taken from this interaction?” asked Silvia. 

 

Brex rolled her eyes and flicked her hair back over her shoulder. “Rey, you don’t need to feel like you have to protect us. You probably have had enough of that. Trust me, taking care of assholes like that is at least, oh, thirty percent of the fun of a night out.”

 

“What do you do to them?” asked Rey, leaning against Jasha, who still had her arm swung over Rey’s shoulder. Probably that last shot was the reason there seemed to suddenly be a disconnect between Rey’s head and her feet. 

 

“She stuns them,” sighed Sara. “Which means we have to explain that three of us work for the Resistance and the Council, and we’re allowed to have the stunners, and then someone tries to give us a lecture about  _ carrying  _ stunners into bars, which basically means we’re obligated to give them the, “Oh yeah? You’re going to lecture women about personal safety?” speech.”

  
Rey considered all this information. “I think pinning them to walls is easier,” she said. “Besides- it’s not like I ever get to use the Force for everyday, helpful things.”

 

“Are you kidding me?” asked Jasha. “I wouldn’t ever have to bend over to pick up my kids’ toys again.”

 

“Well, I guess there’s that. But mostly it’s fight to the death or nothing, you know?”

 

“Not even a little,” said Silvia. “And this looks like our ride.”

 

A small, open-topped Resistance porter was hovering at the next street corner, and the women trotted over to it. Brex and Silvia slid onto the front bench by the driver, Sara and Jasha took the rear, and Rey sprawled in the cargo area, traffic regulations be damned. 

 

“Um,” said the driver. “I think you have to-”

 

“Pretty sure I’m a Commander,” Rey said, wedging herself into the back of the seat more firmly. “Means I outrank you.”

  
Girls night was  _ fun. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *whistling* nope nothing to see here people, nothing at all. 
> 
> PS. If you've left me a comment please know that I _love you_.


	6. A providence that protects idiots and drunkards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Previously on _Stellar Outcasts_ :**  
> -Rey goes to therapy for the first time  
> -When she gets home from therapy she hides in her room with a headache  
> -Ben brings Rey dinner and tells her he’s proud of her  
> -They have sex and it’s kind of schmoopy and fun  
> -The therapist tells Rey she should go out and do things with people  
> -Rey, Silvia, Brex, Jasha, and Sara go out for drinks with BB8. They end up drinking a lot and playing funny, dumb games. Rey has a great time. (And she damn well deserved it fight me.)

By the time the ‘porter got back to the Capitol building, Rey was sober enough to feel her lips again and then she was hugging the other women goodbye. She liked them- they were open and funny and kind, and they certainly didn’t need to be. Not after she’d walked out right in the middle of a conversation. 

 

“Thanks for letting me come with you,” said Rey to Silvia. 

 

“Anytime,” she replied. “It was fun. I’m glad we did that.”

 

“Me too,” said Rey, and she meant it. 

 

Silvia and Brex stayed on the ground floor, weaving their way to Silvia’s room, and Rey continued up the dark staircase by herself. She’d definitely be hungover. Telling Ben that she wouldn’t be training in the morning was the polite thing to do. 

 

Rey wove her way up the stairs, past her turn, and up to Ben’s floor. Her muted boot steps echoed softly in the vaults of the stairwell, the old stone absorbing her presence just as they’d seen all the thousands of people who had come before. Rey liked that the buildings here were so old- nothing lasted long enough to grow old on Jakku. 

 

Ben’s door was locked. It had always been open before, but then again, she’d always been expected. Huh. There was a finger scanner next to the doorknob, like there were on all the doors, and it was functionally pick-proof. Not that she  _ would  _ break into Ben’s room while he was sleeping. She’d probably get a saber in the belly for that kind of behavior. 

 

Before Rey’s liquor-addled brain could direct her back to her own room, Ben’s door opened. He was shirtless and in low-slung sleep pants, and for a second Rey wondered if she was having another Force-bond vision. 

 

“You’re so damn loud,” he muttered, eyes squinty with sleep. 

 

“I am not,” said Rey. “I didn’t even say anything.”

 

Ben wrapped a big hand around her arm and yanked her inside. “No- in your head. You’re being so goddamn loud. Why are you awake, anyway?”

 

They were standing just inside his door, and Rey’s nose was mere inches from Ben’s chest. 

 

“Ah-”

 

His nose wrinkled. “Are you drunk?”

 

“Yes,” said Rey, relieved that she was able to answer  _ that  _ question. “Silvia and her friends- I had a Hosnian Sunrise and-”

 

“Kriff,” Ben muttered, moving away from her. He took a clean glass out of his little cupboard, filled it at the sink, and passed it to her. “Drink this.”

 

She took the glass and sipped at it while Ben found his holopad, pressed some buttons, and then set it back down again. 

 

“So- why are you here?” he asked from his spot at the little table. 

 

Rey wandered to his bed and sat down. It wasn’t fair- his bed seemed so much softer than her own. “I wanted to let you know that I’m going to be hungover,” she said. 

 

His lips quirked at the corners, and the cranky wrinkles around his eyes smoothed out. “Oh really?” he said. “Very insightful of you. Would you like me to alert the rest of the building?”

 

“No,” she said slowly, like she was talking to a particularly recalcitrant droid. “I wanted to let you know that I won’t feel up to training in the morning, and I didn’t want you to wake up early for nothing.”

 

“So instead of waking me up early, you woke me up very late,” he said, eyes twinkling.  _ Twinkling.  _ The former Supreme Commander could twinkle. Rey wanted to get closer so she could study the phenomenon up close. 

 

“Huh?” she asked, some piece of her overtaxed brain kicking in.

 

“I asked why you didn’t just send me a holo,” said Ben. 

 

“Because… because I forgot I had one,” said Rey. “They’re new to me. Like pretty much every other damn thing,” she muttered under her breath. People expected her to just  _ know  _ stuff all the time, and all things considered, Rey thought she was doing okay.

 

Someone tapped on the door and Rey started. Ben answered and that same kriffing med-droid rolled in, opened a compartment, handed something to Ben, and zoomed away again.

 

“What’s wrong?” asked Rey, listing a little to the side. She braced an elbow on her knee to make it look intentional. That would definitely work. 

 

“Nausea meds,” said Ben. “Take them. You’ll need it.”

 

Rey swallowed the pills dry, to Ben’s consternation. 

 

“You have water in your hand,” he said. “Drink it.”

 

“I can’t believe there are nausea pills,” she said, falling backwards and letting her head hit Ben’s pillow. “That’s- I could have used those on Jakku.”

 

“You got sick a lot?” asked Ben, perched on the edge of the bed, his torso angled towards Rey. 

 

“No- well not really,” said Rey. “Cramps, mostly. They’re even worse when you’re dehydrated.” She had her eyes slitted open just enough that she could see Ben grimace. 

 

“You’re nice,” she told him. 

 

“What?” he asked, one black brow rising like doom. 

 

“You’re nice.” She poked Ben in the side and noted that his was a lot firmer than hers. Hmm. Maybe all that endless food could be a problem. Rey looked down at her own stomach, noting it was still flat as ever, not that that particularly mattered. 

 

“Rey,” said Ben gently, and she looked back up at him again. She was  _ definitely  _ a little dizzy, but overall felt fine. “Why am I nice?” he asked again.

 

Probably only two of her brain cells were still functioning, but she lined them up and fired anyway. “You’re… you don’t like that I was sold as a kid.”

 

She could say it now, nearly two years after he’d made her admit it in a burning red room. She’d had to chew on it, to work on it, to rage and hate and accept it. She’d been sold as a child. Nobody had wanted her then, but that didn’t mean that nobody wanted her now. 

 

“Nobody likes that,” said Ben, and he reached out to gently tug the elastic off of Rey’s braid. 

 

“Yeah,” said Rey. “But you’re patient with me too.” Now her mouth was running away with her because Ben was carding his hands through her hair, his fingernails lightly scratching over her scalp, and Rey would probably say  _ anything  _ just to keep him doing that. “I know you want- more. But you’re too nice for me. At least you are  _ now. _ ”

 

“More?” He sounded… not bored, but also not invested. It was easier to talk to him like this, when it felt like there weren’t any stakes that mattered.

 

“You want me to… stay over at night. And talk to you about stuff.”

 

“We’re talking right now,” said Ben. 

 

“I know,” said Rey. “But this is okay.”

 

The meds he’d given her had kicked in, and she could feel her eyelids getting heavier and heavier. His fingers were still stroking through her hair, and as Rey began to drift she felt Ben gently lifting her to the side, wedging her between his body and the wall, and then, feeling safer than she had in a long, long time, Rey fell asleep. 

 

~~~

 

Rey woke up all at once. 

 

She didn’t have that bleary mental checklist she went through in the morning. There was no  _ Who am I? Where am I? Do I still have all the right parts?  _ first thing in the morning for her. (She knew for a fact that this was how Finn woke up. You couldn’t  _ speak  _ to Finn unless he’d already been up for an hour, and even then, being upright wasn’t a real indication of his waking state.)

 

No, Rey snapped back to consciousness immediately, and this morning, that wasn’t exactly a gift. Her teeth were covered in scuzz, her tongue felt dry and swollen, and she had the worst headache she’d ever had in her life. And she was pinned against the wall with the sprawling length of Ben Solo behind her. 

 

Well, if she was going to have an aneurysm somewhere, beneath Ben Solo was a pretty good place to go. 

 

The most pressing issue was that she really, really had to pee. She tried to wiggle her way up, but Ben’s arm was draped over her waist and there really wasn’t getting out of there without waking him up. As non-aggressively as she could, Rey lifted his arm, sat up, and crab walked her way to the foot of the bed. All with her eyes half-closed. 

 

“Hey,” said Ben, his voice that rough road that was paved with good intentions. “Leaving?”

 

“Gotta go pee,” said Rey, her voice something a lot less sexy and a lot more animal-like. 

 

She shuffled to the ‘fresher, so thankful that Ben had gotten her those meds the night before, and then peed for what felt like solid, actual minutes. Plural. 

 

In the sterile blankness of Ben’s ‘fresher she realized that she  _ reeked.  _ She smelled like stale alcohol and fever-sweat, her hair was plastered to her forehead, and her eyes felt like she’d been walking in a sandstorm. 

 

Just. Excellent. 

 

Not caring that she’d have to put the old clothes back on, Rey stripped, stepped into Ben’s shower, and enjoyed the chance to try all of his four different bottles. One randomly went into her hair, and that one smelled like fruit. One smelled like sawdust, and she washed her legs with it. The one that didn’t smell like anything but maybe clean laundry went over Rey’s boobs, and the final one randomly became face wash. She was going to smell  _ fantastic  _ under the alcoholic miasma of last night’s sweat. 

 

Ben knocked on the door as soon as Rey had rinsed and turned the shower off. “I’ve got a shirt you can borrow,” he said, and Rey cracked the door (releasing a billow of steam) and took the material from him by hooking her elbow around the door. 

 

“Thanks,” she said, and dropped the soft black (did he own something in a color?) material over her head. The shift hit her mid-thigh, and was wide enough in the shoulders that it kept falling dramatically to one side or another. 

 

Well, he’d seen her naked before, so in only the drape of black Rey re-entered the rest of Ben’s apartment. 

 

“How do you feel?” he asked. He had  _ caf.  _ Following her line of sight Ben gestured to the little counter, where a steaming mug was waiting for her. 

 

“Like shit,” said Rey. “Thanks for putting up with me.”

 

She walked to the counter and leaned against it while cradling the hot mug in her hands. This- she had no idea how she’d gone so long without it. Her drink had already been sweetened the way she liked it, and Rey looked up at Ben in surprise. “You know how I take my caf,” she said. 

 

Suddenly- all in one fell swoop, like starships crashing down- guilt slammed into Rey, hot and raw. 

 

He knew how she took her caf. He understood where she’d come from, but managed to acknowledge it without pitying her for it. He let her fuck him without- anything in exchange, really. He trained with her, he monitored her ‘career’, he made it a point to sit by her at dinner every night. 

 

He’d made something of himself. He’d made something of himself despite the  _ entire galaxy  _ expecting him to fall back to the Dark Side, and- she was fucking whining about people knowing her name when she didn’t know theirs. 

 

He was good- not blameless, not even overly kind, but ...good. He tried so damn hard. 

 

He deserved better than her. What the fuck was he even doing with her, anyway?

 

“Thanks for calling up the med-droid last night,” Rey muttered into the arching curve of her mug. “I feel better than I should.”

 

“We all deserve a night of stupidity,” said Ben. “It’s really not fair- for someone who had to have killed most of a bottle of liquor last night, you look good this morning.”

 

“Good?” asked Rey dumbly. 

 

“Yeah,” said Ben. “You always look good, though. Sometimes it’s irritating. Not many people look good mid-orgasm. Or drunk. Or covered in dirt and other people’s blood.”

 

“Stop, please,” said Rey. She smelled like Ben, she was wearing his clothing, she’d spent all night in his bed.  She couldn’t- she wasn’t ready to hear Ben call her beautiful outside sex. ( _ What was said during sex didn’t count, right? It was just the hormones talking. _ )

 

“What? Telling you that you’re pretty? You are pretty,” he said, exasperated. “I was telling you to break the tension and keep you from bolting, but why the hell shouldn’t I mean it? Why shouldn’t I say that you’re pretty, or smart, or resilient, or fierce?”

 

“Because-” 

 

Maybe Rey could blame it on the lack of sleep. Maybe she could blame the remnants of alcohol still swimming through her system. Later she could come up with a thousand excuses, because  _ she told Ben the truth.  _

 

“I haven’t earned that,” she blurted out, the hand holding her mug shaking just enough for her to notice. “And I don’t know what to say back, and I like it, and I just-”

 

She turned, blindly putting her cup down so hard the caf sloshed over her fingers, and then strode into the bathroom to find yesterday’s pants.

 

“Rey?” asked Ben. 

 

Socks were next, and she yanked them on ruthlessly, listening to Ben’s footsteps padding barefoot across the floor. 

 

“Don’t,” she told him, brushing past the breadth of him and striding to the door. Rey stuffed her breastband and undies into the pocket of her jacket. 

 

“You can’t just- just leave every time something scares you,” said Ben. This was addressed to Rey’s upturned ass, since she was busy lacing up her boots. 

 

  
“Really?” she asked through a throat choking on panic.  _ He’d told her she was resilient. He’d told her she was fierce.  _ “Watch me.”

 

The door closing behind her echoed in the lazy-Saturday indolence of the hall. It sounded like the crack of a fast-moving ship breaking atmo for open space. It sounded like loss. 

 

~~~

 

Dr. Kimura’s office was closed for the weekend, Finn and company were probably still asleep (well, in bed, at least) and Silvia was probably just as hungover as Rey. Her own apartment was too small to contain the unhappy, restless energy shivering over Rey’s skin, so Rey wandered.

 

The Capitol district was busy, even on a weekend. Rey bought crispy veggie balls from a street vender and carried the slightly greasy plastic cone with her to the park, where she sat under one of the towering, autumn-colored trees and watched the world go by. 

 

The war hadn’t come here; not until the very end. These buildings had stood for hundreds of years. The kids chasing each other over the grass, they hadn’t heard of loss yet, or thirst, or choices where there  _ was  _ no good option. Food was plentiful, schools were safe, and there were enough jobs to go around. 

 

The holo watch pinged at Rey, and then read, in a slightly monotonous voice:  _ From  Councilwoman Rose. Did you really beat up a bar full of men last night? _

 

It took Rey a solid minute to figure out what that message could be referring to. 

 

_ No, _ she dictated back.  _ A couple guys were getting too pushy. I Force-tossed one of them away from us. Just one.  _

 

Rose didn’t reply, so Rey let her head roll back to rest against the bark of the tree. She’d fucked it up; fucked it up with pretty much everyone but Silvia. 

 

The holo started reading to her again.  _ From Councilwoman Rose: I can see there was just one. The bartender from last night leaked the video when people accused you.  _

 

Rey didn’t know what to say to that. Was it a good thing? 

 

_ From Councilwoman Rose: On behalf of the Galactic Council, could you give a speech for Intergalactic Women’s Day? _

 

Rey replied,  _ I don’t do well with speeches.  _

 

_ From Councilwoman Rose: I said yes. I’ll help you practice. Where are you?  _

 

_ We have to practice right now? When is this speech? _

 

_ Not for a couple months. I want to talk to you.  _

 

_ I’m in Charles Park. Under a tree.  _

 

_ Be right there.  _

 

Rose sauntered over twenty minutes later, dressed casually and with her hair down. “You look terrible,” she told Rey with the easy familiarity of someone who has shared close quarters. “Whose shirt is that?”

 

Rey had thrown her brown leather jacket over Ben’s shirt, but the stupid thing was still clearly too big. “Ben’s,” she said with a grimace. “We’ve been… seeing each other for a while.”

 

“I’d guessed as much,” said Rose, dropping down to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with Rey, her soft, flat shoes planted firmly on the ground in front of her. The shoes had colorful pieces of fruit patterned over them. Rey wanted a pair. 

 

“Yeah?” asked Rey, beyond caring if people found out she was having-  _ had _ been having- sex with Ben. 

 

“Yeah,” said Rose. “It’s the way you move around each other. You always- and I mean always- know exactly where he is. You sit on a bench next to him at dinner and you’ve never so much as bumped elbows with him, and it’s not like you avoid him. You both just… know. All the time.”

 

That information made Rey feel a little sick. She’d  _ fucked up.  _

 

“So why the wardrobe swap today?” asked Rose. “And the moping?”

 

“I went out with Silvia and her friends last night,” said Rey, enjoying the way the sun fell across her face. It wasn’t as strong here as it was on Jakku; it didn’t turn the inside of her eyelids blood-red, but it felt good. Familiar and warm. 

 

“I saw that in the vid,” said Rose. “You went viral.”

 

“I didn’t even  _ do  _ anything,” said Rey. “He lunged at me, so I tossed him.”

 

“Well, technically it could be argued you assaulted him,” said Rose, but there was no rancor in her voice. “But it was clearly self defense, and you left as soon as the threat had been neutralized.”

 

“Yeah,” said Rey. “After that we came home, and I was drunk, and I went to see Ben, and ended up falling asleep in his bed.”

 

“First time?” Rose asked, insightful as ever.

 

“Yeah,” said Rey. “We’ve never stayed over. I woke up, and showered, and felt like shit, and he loaned me a shirt. Then…”

 

They sat in quiet, listening to the rumble of ‘porters and the happy cacophony of a city of people. 

 

“Was it like that night in the lounge with me and Finn?” asked Rose. 

 

“I knew you didn’t forgive me for that,” said Rey. “And I really am sorry.”

 

“I forgave you,” said Rose easily, still sitting quietly at Rey’s side. “I just think it worried me more than it did the boys.”

 

“They’re boys,” said Rey, nodding. Yeah. “It was kind of like that, though. He said I was pretty. And smart.”

 

“You are pretty and smart,” said Rose, entirely without judgement. “Why does it bother you?”

 

Rey thought about it. She sat in the discomfort of her feelings and really, actually thought about it. “I feel like… it’s okay if I’ve earned that thing. I worked on being better with the Force, and I  _ agree  _ that I’m strong with the Force, so that wouldn’t bother me. But I don’t think I’m nice- at least not the way you guys see me. And pretty is… mooshy.”

 

“Mooshy.”

 

“Eye of the beholder and all that. I don’t think I’m ugly, it’s just weird that  _ that’s  _ what matters, right? Nobody has ever told me, ‘Hey Rey, you’re really good at fixing up the copper-wired components of eighty-year-old startech; we’re able to sell it like almost new.’  _ That  _ mattered to me.”

 

“Okay, well, full disclosure: people care a lot more about looks than combustion coils when you  _ don’t  _ live on Jakku.”

 

“I’ve noticed,” said Rey darkly. 

 

“This isn’t about looks, though,” said Rose. “We’re getting sidetracked.”

 

“Yeah,” said Rey, plucking a piece of grass and shredding it between her fingers. 

 

“What else?” asked Rose. 

 

“What’s your hourly rate?” asked Rey. Rose huffed, and Rey managed a chuckle. “Okay, okay. Ah- Are you dependent on Poe and Finn?”

 

“I want them around, and I’d hate it if I lost one of them. I can’t really imagine what life would be like, after something like that. Not after Paige.”

 

“Right,” said Rey. “Doesn’t that scare you?”

 

“Yes,” said Rose. “But… I know life  _ would  _ go on. It’s not like they’d take all the oxygen with them. Don’t you trust yourself that much? To know you’re strong enough to survive pretty much anything?”

 

“Yes,” said Rey. “And no. On Jakku-”

 

“You don’t fucking live on Jakku,” said Rose, interrupting, her voice flat. “You don’t. We are never going to let something like that happen to you again. You can  _ want  _ things. You can trust that there are other people who are looking after you, too. It’s not just- you don’t have to just survive anymore, Rey, okay?  _ Live.  _ Fucking live. You didn’t take on the whole goddamn galaxy so that you could worry about people taking things from you. That’s not happening again.”

 

Rey closed her eyes and tipped her face back up to the sky, willing the tears pooling along her lash line to disappear. How did Rose always see right through... everything?

 

“What if I do all that- open up, and try, and ... _ need  _ someone, and they leave again?”

 

“You can’t think like that,” said Rose, reaching over to twine her fingers through Rey’s. “You can’t, because we are all, every one of us, going to die. So what you do is maximize the time you have. Go after the person you like, and if it doesn’t work, you tried. You didn’t wait.”

 

Rey gave Rose’s hand a gentle squeeze. 

 

“You’re pretty smart,” she said, her voice thick but steady. 

 

“Why do you think the boys need me? They’d be lost without me.”

 

Rey chuckled a little damply. “We all would.” She lowered her forehead to her knees and huffed out a breath. “I’ve got serious issues.”

 

“So do we all,” said Rose in a tone that made it clear that excuses were non-accepted currency. “See a professional.”

 

“I am,” said Rey. “But she’s closed on weekends.”

 

“Hey, look at you,” said Rose, nuding Rey with her shoulder. “Good work.”

 

“Yes, I had Artoo make me an appointment, which I attended. Whoo. Hoo.”

 

“You’re doing it again!”

 

A finger dug into Rey’s side under her ribs. 

 

“Hey!” she said. 

 

“I’m going to call you on your shit,” said Rose. “And you can call me on mine. And Poe’s,” she added as an afterthought. “I have my hands full with him.”

 

“You do not have shit,” said Rey. “I refuse to believe it.”

 

“I… need a detail person. There are policies and ideas that sound like they should work for everyone, but in reality they could be problematic. You’re best at thinking about the normal person who just wants to get by. I want to change the whole world. You just want it to be a better one for people like these.”

 

“People like us,” said Rey. “Yeah.”

 

They watched families come and go, kids play, and people rush along the sidewalks. 

 

“I probably have some groveling to do,” said Rey eventually. “Any advice?”

 

“No,” said Rose immediately. “I have done nothing wrong in my life, ever.”

 

With Rose, Rey suspected that might be true. 

 

“But I can tell you what works on me: mean it. Tell them how you jumped to the conclusion you did, say where you went wrong, and them what you’ll do to keep it from happening again.”

 

“Kriff,” Rey muttered. 

 

“C’mon,” said Rose, standing and offering Rey a hand. “I’ll walk you back.”

 

They wove through the park, enjoying the sun and the breeze and the relative peace of their corner of the world. 

 

“You know,” said Rey slowly as the dome of the Capitol came into view. “I think you should come out on our next Girls’ Night. The ladies would like you.”

 

“Yeah?” said Rose, her face lighting up. 

 

“Yeah,” said Rey, more confident now. “But you need to be ready to spill some secrets on the guys. 

 

“Oh really?” said Rose, one dark eyebrow climbing. 

 

“Yeah,” said Rey, fully grinning for the first time that morning (or afternoon, or whatever time it was now). “Sara told me they have healthy libidos and kind of a bragging kink.”

 

“I have stories,” said Rose, her smirk carnivorous. “Now all I need is an audience.”

 

It was quieter inside the lobby, and Rey and Rose paused at the bottom of the staircase. 

 

“I … I really appreciate everything,” said Rey. “I’m glad you’re on our side. I’m also really glad you’re  _ my  _ friend.”

 

“Anytime,” said Rose, pulling Rey down into a hug. “I meant what I said. You don’t have to take care of yourself all alone. It’s a group thing. You take care of us, we take care of you, and there’s plenty to go around.”

 

She blew Rey a kiss, and then she was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Behold, dear reader: a WHOLE CHAPTER without sex. I know. Insane. 
> 
> I can't believe this is already the penultimate chapter! It feels like this has just flown by with you all <3


	7. The Rhythm of the Expanding Universe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Previously on _Stellar Outcasts_ :**  
> -Rey (and the ladies) get home drunk  
> -Rey goes up to Ben’s room while sloshed, he takes care of her  
> -Rey wakes up in Ben’s bed hungover, he’s still sweet so our dumb feral girl freaks out and runs away again  
> -Rose reads Rey the riot act in the park  
> -Rose and Rey walk back to their building

Rose left Rey standing in the lobby of the Capitol building with only her regrets for company. She knew what she had to do next, but this… this was going to be the hard part. 

 

Rey ducked into the shadowy alcove under the main sweep of stairs, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply. The air here was dry and cool and smelled faintly of dust.Two people were walking on the corridor above Rey, and she could faintly hear the sound of their footfalls. 

 

_ In. Out. The Force is an energy that connects all living things.  _

 

Heartbeats flooded Rey’s mind: the high, fluttery pulse of a bird on the roof, the slow, contented thump of someone’s dog having a nap, and everywhere else the two-part drumbeat of human life. It all blended together as primordial static, and… there, there was the one she wanted, his heart in tune to the rhythm of the expanding universe. 

 

Ben was in his room, up above her. That was a surprise.

 

Slowly Rey came back to herself, and then she started to climb. Someone almost knocked into her as she turned onto the third floor landing, and by the fifth she was up to a jog. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say yet; she wasn’t even sure if he’d let her back inside, but she needed to try. She  _ wanted  _ to try. 

 

Her first fear was assuaged when she turned onto his hall and found his door cracked open just the tiniest bit. (He must have felt her coming. Again.) 

 

“Ben?” she asked as she stepped inside and shut the door behind her gently. 

 

“What is it this time?” he asked. He was leaning against his little counter, his long legs stretched out in front of him. “Did someone look at you the wrong way at lunch?”

 

“No,” said Rey. “I came to apologize.”

 

Ben crossed his arms over his chest and cocked his head. “Well?” he asked. 

 

Rey swallowed. He wasn’t going to make this easy, and she guessed that she deserved it. Besides: riskier climbs always had a higher payoff in the end. All she had to do was not look down. 

 

“I… am done making excuses for myself,” she said finally, remembering Rose’s reaction in the park. “There’s a difference between a  _ reason  _ and an  _ excuse. _ I ran out of your apartment earlier because I was nervous and a little scared. The excuse would be because I, you know. ‘Had a traumatic childhood and wasn’t properly socialized’,” she added, complete with air quotes. 

 

“Fine,” said Ben. “Why were you nervous and scared? I haven’t-” Clearly he thought better of that train of thought. “You have to know I don’t want to hurt you or scare you.”

 

“I know that,” said Rey. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t do it anyway. I- I hate it when people say nice things to me when it feels like I haven’t earned them. It doesn’t make any  _ sense,  _ and it makes me feel like we’re operating under different assumptions.  _ You  _ assume you’re having an affair with a kind, resilient woman.  _ I  _ assume you’re having an affair with a slightly feral scavenger who tries her best. That… there’s dissonance, there.”

 

Ben’s gaze was thoughtful. “Alright. That’s ...I can see that. It’s stupid, but I can follow the fatuous logic just as well as the next guy. Keep going.”

 

This was the part she hadn’t told Rose. “It also- I told myself those things. ‘Just one more find’, or ‘Don’t worry, your parents will come back. Everything will be alright.’ And I was always lying to myself. So it kind of…”

 

“It sounds like everyone else is lying to you, too, even though you know that they mean it. Good. Keep going,” Ben cut in. He looked at her expectantly. 

 

Rey’s palms were sweating, now. She was saying things out loud to Ben that she hadn’t admitted to herself, and this was the most… sick kind of pain Rey had ever experienced. She felt like she was giving herself surgery, cutting herself open just to watch her organs pulse.

 

But Ben had asked, and she would try. 

 

“I hate needing things. Or even wanting things, sometime. It makes me feel dependent and weak. If you  _ need  _ something, and someone takes that thing away from you, they have power over you.”

 

“Sometimes,” said Ben. “But mostly not.”

 

Rey didn’t need to be prompted to start again this time. Ben would settle for nothing but a full, documented vivisection, and Rey aimed to please. “I feel like my whole life was destroyed and reworked for this kriffing war,” she said. “And now that it’s over- now that I fought it, and helped to end it- I’m… not needed anymore. I’m being left behind by the thing I worked so hard to save.”

 

“Of course we need you,” said Ben, and his face creased into the first true expression of emotion that Rey ahad seen since she walked back into his rooms. “Of course we do. You-”

 

“You need me to beat up fascists and slavers and drug mules,” said Rey. “And I guess the galaxy does need that, but-”

 

Ben’s eyes narrowed and he studied her. “Do you… want that?” he asked. 

 

Rey’s mouth flattened into a grimace before she could smooth it away again. Now her knees were trembling, and she realized she’d had them locked the whole time she’d been standing in front of Ben. She relaxed, just a little, and felt blood flow return to her feet. 

 

“I… want to help keep people safe,” said Rey. “And if being an enforcer is how I do that, I can live with it.”

 

Ben looked like he was still thinking, but didn’t comment on that. 

 

Afternoon light was streaming through the high windows over Ben’s bed and kitchen table. Dust motes swirled in the air, and Rey wondered if time was moving at all. Maybe they were frozen here, stilled in amber, caught balanced on the precipice of this, and something… other. Something more. 

 

“What do I have to do with any of this?” Ben finally asked. 

 

And there it was. The hardest question of them all. 

 

“I-” Rey swallowed hard. “I’ve wanted you since you asked me to join you in Snoke’s throne room. It scared me then, because it would have been so easy to say yes. You looked at me like you saw a whole person, and- but I didn’t want to rule. And I didn’t want the First Order in charge.”

 

“And you were right about that,” said Ben, his voice suddenly low and lulling. 

 

Rey studied the scuffed toes of her boots. “I wanted you. That’s why I hooked up with you the first time, and all the other times. Because you still looked at me like a whole person and not a figurehead, but you were on our side now. So I told myself it was just sex, and that was okay, because I could live without sex.”

 

Even when she heard him walk across the room, even when the dark toes of his shoes were inches away from hers, she didn’t look up. 

 

“Rey,” he said softly. “You are a person. And I want you too.”

 

Rose had said that Rey needed to tell Ben what she’d do to avoid this happening again. That was ...going to be hard. 

 

“I- well I can’t promise I won’t get scared and storm out again sometime,” said Rey, and yes, now she was crying. Goddammit. What a waste of water.  _ Kriffing tears.  _ “But I’ll always come back. If you want me to.” 

 

Ben didn’t say anything, and Rey wasn’t ready to let this silence hang between them, so she babbled on, “And I’ll keep going to therapy, and I’ll keep trying to tell you what’s wrong even though this is absolutely mortifying, and-”

 

“Rey,” said Ben, tipping her chin up. His eyes were so soft that it made Rey cry even harder, because Rey could take anything the world threw at her right on the chin, but this- this wasn’t for her, it couldn’t be, and yet: it was.

 

“I forgive you,” said Ben. “And I understand. And- no, don’t stiffen up. Just listen, okay? I’m proud of you. I am. You’ve survived. You’ve survived  _ everything.  _ Now enjoy it.”

 

Rey was still crying when Ben kissed her, and she was so thankful he did. She had so much to say, and no words left to give him. But this- the language of fingers and tongues, soft touches and hot mouths- she could speak that with him. She could write essays on his shoulders and swirl poems over his chest. 

 

Rey was always at her best when doing something. 

 

“Ben,” Rey murmured, so close her lips brushed his. One word, and he heard the question:  _ are we doing this? Do you want this?” _

 

“Sweetheart,” said Ben, craning his neck to press kisses along the shadow of Rey’s jaw. Her head lolled back as Ben pushed her jacket off her arms and onto the floor (with her underwear still stuffed in the pockets). 

 

He yanked her (his) shirt off next, and then reached for his own as Rey toed off her boots. 

 

She was just as efficient as she ever was, but somehow this was different. She was used to him watching her undress, but she’d never felt quite so naked. 

 

He was done before she was, and crossed to her to snap the button on her pants and yank them down around her ankles. Then, between one breath and another, he picked her up, crossed the room, and set her carefully on the bed. “Do you still-?” Ben asked, but Rey answered before he could finish. 

 

“Yes,  _ stars,  _ yes.”

 

He settled in beside her, the long expanse of his warm skin pressed to her side, and kissed her again. His lips were sweet; no biting today, and his huge palm trailed slowly across the curves and planes of her body: from the arch of her shoulder to the wing of her collarbone, the swell of a breast, the flat of her stomach and the flare of her hip. He could reach the outside of her thigh, his hand warm and heavy, before it began its ascent again. 

 

Rey could feel goosebumps springing up wherever the pads of his fingers touched, and she shivered against him. Maybe this was how she evolved: melted down in the heat of Ben Solo and reforged as something stronger. 

 

Eventually, when asphyxiation was looking more and more like a possibility, Ben turned his head from Rey’s lips to press kisses over the fluttering pulse thrumming in her neck. “You’re so strong,” he told her, his voice barely louder than a whisper. “You’re so strong, and when you let yourself melt like this, Rey, for me- stars, it’s addictive. I just want to keep you here, warm and soft and mine, and let the rest of the galaxy go fuck itself.”

 

Rey moaned, breathy, and slid her hand down the ridges of his abdomen until she found his cock, hard and arching. He twitched when she wrapped her fingers around it, swiping her thumb over the head to catch the little drop of cum eagerly beading there. 

 

“Stars,” he mumbled, shifting his weight so that he was tipped just that much closer to Rey. 

 

“I’ve wanted you so much,” said Rey, watching the flushed head of his cock emerge and disappear again from the tight fingers of Rey’s fist. “Since- forever, it feels like. I had to stop myself from coming up here every night.”

 

“I missed you when you didn’t,” said Ben, lowering his head to mouth gently at a soft pink nipple. “Thought my bed was too cold and clean.”

 

His clever fingers danced their way over her ribs, around the shallow pool of her bellybutton, and down to the soft curve of her pubic bone. “And some nights I could still smell you on the pillows, and I’d wake up so hard it hurt.”

 

“You should have told me,” said Rey, rocking her hips to encourage his fingers to fall further into her pussy. 

 

“You wouldn’t have come,” said Ben, letting his teeth graze over one damp, hardened nipple. She rolled her head back, flexing her hips and pushing her breasts higher, back towards Ben’s talented, sinful mouth. 

 

“You- maybe you’re right,” said Rey, speeding up the slide of her hand over the smooth skin of Ben’s cock. 

 

Ben stopped taunting Rey and grabbed her wrist, removing it from his shaft and lifting her arm up over her head. “I’d like this to last longer than the next ten minutes,” he said with a little grin. “And if you keep doing that, while looking the way you do all stretched out for me in my bed, I won’t.”

 

Well, that was flattering. 

 

His hand slid between her legs in truth, two fingers tickling lightly over her labia. 

 

“Ben,” Rey whined, twisting. 

 

“Patience,” said Ben, worrying her nipple again. Rey grabbed a fistful of his hair. Ben retaliated by biting her very, very precisely. 

 

Finally he began to circle her clit, lightly and with confidence, and when throaty little noises were falling from Rey’s mouth like drifting grains of sand down a dune Ben shifted, sliding one finger, and then two, inside her. Now his thumb was a gentle pressure against her clit, Rey’s hips were moving sinuously, and his fingers were slowly stroking her inside. 

 

“Ben,” Rey said on a huff: a request, a prayer. “Ben.”

 

He shushed her between kisses, rolling carefully so that he was between her thighs, resting there in the oldest cradle there was. 

 

_ They hadn’t done it like this before,  _ Rey thought as Ben slid an arm beneath her, hooking his fingers over her shoulder. In all their months of bed sharing, they hadn’t done this. 

 

“Hey sweetheart,” said Ben, smiling down at her, sliding his fingers back into her, wiggling in the wetness he found there. 

 

“Hi,” said Rey, a little shy, stretching up to kiss him. 

 

Ben moved from her mouth to her breast, and Rey watched as his dark hair eddied over the smooth paleness of her skin, all while his fingers continued to move in her. 

 

She was trying to be patient for him, but he had her so off-balance and aroused that she couldn’t help it if her hand found its way between her legs and attempted to take over rubbing at her clit. 

 

“Stop,” said Ben patiently, moving her hand again, and thankfully he decided he was done teasing her, too. Rey gripped the sheets and Ben’s broad shoulder as he lined himself up with her pussy, sopping the head up over her clit once, then twice, and then sliding home inch by glorious, joining inch. 

 

Rey’s fingers fisted onto a chunk of Ben’s hair at the nape of his neck. 

 

“Oh,” she sighed, feeling herself go warm and pliant against him. 

 

“Look at you,” he said, propping himself on one elbow so he could brush loose strands of hair away from her face. “You’re so much, Rey.” 

 

Part of her couldn’t believe this. Ben was inside her, as deeply as he could go, and instead of actually  _ fucking her  _ he was content to stay there, joined, and talking to her. Another part of Rey wanted to crawl inside of Ben and stay there, letting him tell her how proud he was of her always. 

 

“You’re so strong,” he told her again (how many times was that now?) as he slowly rolled his hips, grinding his pubic bone to hers. “And you’re so clever. You learn things almost immediately, so much faster that anyone else I know.”

 

He was setting up a rhythm, now, something deep and slow that rolled into Rey like the tide, and she’d never been swimming but if it felt like this she’d welcome the chance to drown. 

 

Their gazes were locked, whiskey-gold hazel to deep, burnt-sugar brown, and  _ Ben kept talking.  _

 

“You deserve this,” his said, his voice lower now, deeper and insistent. “You deserve to have somewhere safe and comfortable to sleep. You deserve to have friends, and to laugh, and to take as many ridiculously hot showers as you want.”

 

Rey thought she might be crying again, but she couldn’t let go of Ben’s shoulders to find out. If she let go she might fly away entirely, lost forever in the haze of Ben’s body bracketed over hers. 

 

“You’re such a good friend,” he said, letting his face fall into the pillow, pressing his cheek to hers. His voice was muffled, but Rey heard every word. “You’d do anything for the people you love, absolutely anything. Let us do that for you too, sunshine. We’ve got you.”

 

He was pushing into her more deeply now, rocking her into the mattress, and Rey didn’t think she’d be able to speak if she tried, so she turned her head and pressed kisses over the curve of his ear, his jaw, his cheek, his hair. Anything she could reach, she kissed. 

 

Ben’s hand snaked between them, and he pressed himself up on one elbow to meet her eyes again. She jumped when he found her clit, and he smiled. “I love how you look when you come,” he said. “You flush all the way down to your tits.”

 

Rey made a strangled noise and hitched her thighs up higher on Ben’s hips. She was so close, floating in the warm, hungry little cocoon Ben had made of his words and arms and cock.

 

Ben’s fingers circled, his hips worked into hers, and he dropped his forehead against her own. “You’re  _ good,  _ Rey. Believe me, sunshine. You’re good.”

 

Rey came on a gasp, her fingers pulling Ben closer and back bowing up.  _ He thought she was good.  _

 

_ And maybe she was. _

 

The fluttering of her cunt must have pulled Ben over the edge too, because he ground against her, eyes closed, and shivered in the clutch of her arms and legs around him. 

 

“Ben,” she rasped, the first word she’d managed in who knew how long. 

 

“Stars,” he muttered into her hair. 

 

His weight had her pinned firmly to the mattress, and she didn’t want to ever get up. She pressed another kiss to his hair and doodled across the skin of his back, enjoying the way his expanding lungs pressed against hers: heart to heart. 

 

Eventually he shifted, pushing up and away, but not before he dropped a kiss to Rey’s forehead. Finally she swiped at the tear tracks on her cheeks, feeling… serene. At peace and cleansed, at least for the moment. 

 

Ben returned with a damp washcloth and swiped at Rey’s groin before briskly tending to his own. 

 

“You okay?” he asked, curling around her in the bed and wrestling the covers up over them both. 

 

“Yeah,” said Rey, turning to face him. “I really am.”

 

She didn’t fall asleep, not fully, but drifted in a drowse colored only by the even, steady breathing of Ben next to her. He’d forgiven her, as had Rose and Poe and Finn. She  _ wasn’t  _ on Jakku anymore; she didn’t have to fight for every last thing. 

 

She could have this, all of this, if she was willing to work at it. She could have a job that meant something, she could have friends and drunk Friday nights, she could have someone to come home to. 

 

She could have all of it, because Rey had never been afraid of work. 

##  THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! 
> 
> Thank you so much to all who have shown support for this story. I worked incredibly hard on the theme and prose, and I hope you all have enjoyed it. Art is something that is made to be shared, and would like to thank you all for sharing this with me <3 
> 
> If you'd like to come hang out with me on twitter, I'm @caseydoesfandom!


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